Active Networks and Active Network Management: A Proactive Management
Framework
Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, (2001)Abstract
Active networking is an exciting new paradigm in digital networking
that has the potential to revolutionize the manner in which communication
takes place. It is an emerging technology, one in which new ideas
are constantly being formulated and new topics of research are springing
up even as this book is being written. This technology is very likely
to appeal to a broad spectrum of users from academia and industry.
Therefore, this book was written in a way that enables all these
groups to understand the impact of active networking in their sphere
of interest. Information services managers, network administrators,
and e-commerce developers would like to know the potential benefits
of the new technology to their businesses, networks, and applications.
The book introduces the basic active networking paradigm and its
potential impacts on the future of information handling in general
and on communications in particular. This is useful for forward-looking
businesses that wish to actively participate in the development
of active networks and ensure a head start in the integration of
the technology in their future products, be they applications or
networks. Areas in which active networking is likely to make significant
impact are identified, and the reader is pointed to any related
ongoing research efforts in the area. The book also provides a deeper
insight into the active networking model for students and researchers,
who seek challenging topics that define or extend frontiers of the
technology. It describes basic components of the model, explains
some of the terms used by the active networking community, and provides
the reader with taxonomy of the research being conducted at the
time this book was written. Current efforts are classified based
on typical research areas such as mobility, security, and management.
The intent is to introduce the serious reader to the background
regarding some of the models adopted by the community, to outline
outstanding issues concerning active networking, and to provide
a snapshot of the fast-changing landscape in active networking research.
Management is a very important issue in active networks because
of its open nature. The latter half of the book explains the architectural
concepts of a model for managing active networks and the motivation
for a reference model that addresses limitations of the current
network management framework by leveraging the powerful features
of active networking to develop an integrated framework. It also
describes a novel application enabled by active network technology
called the Active Virtual Network Management Prediction (AVNMP)
algorithm. AVNMP is a proactive management system; in other words,
it provides the ability to solve a potential problem before it impacts
the system by modeling network devices within the network itself
and running that model ahead of real time.