Active Networks, Policy-based Networking and QoS Assurance

This page shows methods for distributed computing on internets, a network of routers, and their applications to QoS assurance.

What are Active Networks?

Active networks are:

• Networks that are customized to user needs.
• Networks that downloads programs to their nodes (i.e., routers, switches, etc.).

What is the relation between the Active Networks, Policy-based Networking and QoS?

Policy-based QoS assurance is the first step toward active networks, because for QoS assurance:

• QoS conditions are customized to user needs.
• Policies are downloaded to routers, where policies are rule-based programs with limited functionality.
  • The form of a policy rule is: if condition then action, which is called a production rule in AI field.

See the IWAN 2000 paper below for more discussions.

Block Rules

Block-rules approach is a rule-based approach to QoS assurance and active networks using building block rules and "labels". Block rules are interoperable and modular (syntagmatically and paradigmatically modular). An expired internet draft and two papers are available now.

• Kanada, Y., Two Rule-based Building-block Architectures for Policy-based Network Control, 2nd International Working Conference on Active Networks (IWAN 2000), October 2000. (PDF file)
• Kanada, Y., A Representation of Network Node QoS Control Policies Using Rule-based Building Blocks, International Workshop on Quality of Service 2000 (IWQoS 2000), pp. 161-163, 2000. (PDF file)
• Kanada, Y., Rule-based Modular Representation of QoS Policies, 10th Networking Architecture Workshop, pp. 106-113, IEICE, 2000 (Paper PDF version, Presentation in English (PDF version), Presentation in Japanese (PDF version)).
• Kanada, Y., Ikezawa, M., Miyake, S., and Atarashi, Y.: SNMP-based QoS Programming Interface MIB for Routers, draft-kanada-diffserv-qospifmib-00.txt, Internet Draft, IETF, 1999 (Textual vesion at IETF, Local textual version, Text for roff; Tools for formatting Internet Drafts and RFCs (Perl script and shell script) are also available)
  • Slides used in 46th IETF: Configuration Management BOF, Diffserv WG, and RAP WG (not recommended).

More on Block Rules

See my networking papers.