Federating Autonomic Network Management Systems for Flexible Control of End-to-End Communications Services

Network management systems today federate to provide end-to-end delivery of communications services. However, this federation is achieved through closed or static engineering approaches targeted toward well-defined application scenarios. While these solutions can be very effective, they typically involve significant recurring maintenance costs. This chapter argues that this approach will soon be no longer tenable. The continually evolving nature of large networks means that they are ever-changing in terms of the details of individual capability. Hence, static federation approaches are fundamentally brittle and expensive in the medium term. In contrast, the approach the chapter advocates centers around dynamic creation and management of federations based on negotiating and enabling appropriate, minimal integration between deployed network and service management systems. The chapter outlines a layered federation model that attempts to encapsulate and interrelate the various models, processes, and techniques that will be required to realize such a flexible approach to management system federation. Using an example of use case based on end-to-end IPTV service delivery, the chapter discusses the ongoing work of the Ireland-based FAME strategic research cluster in pursuance of this vision.