Figure 1: Keeping the network in a 'user-friendly' state.
In Figure 1, required components of a self-regulating
network management are illustrated. The network
state is described by a certain set of management parameters. Part of
these, called set 1, presents parameters for the self-regulating mechanism whose task
is to keep the network in a state where most
of the network users
get the requested quality to transport their data. Further on this will be referred to as the
'user-friendly state'. When certain values
of these parameters are exceeded, a set of actions has to be initiated
to prevent
the network from leaving this state. This 'set of actions'
needs to modify the configuration of well-known parts of the network, the
second set of management parameters.
The correctness of the actions taken should be controllable, i.e. a third
set of parameters has to be determined whose values clearly prove that
we did not perform the wrong actions and the time for the actions was accurate.
We now have to identify the appropriate set of parameters, actions and time to perform these actions, that means 'critical' values of the parameters. In the rest of this paper, we refer to these 'critical values' as 'action values', as they require a certain action.
The parameters are derived from management goals which are obtained when using the 'connection-oriented view', introduced in section 2. First we ask what could happen to an ATM connection and then analyze the possibilities to prevent the identified problem cases. This leads us to an informal description of the required components of the system in Figure 1.
After the theoretical analysis the setting of action values is discussed in section 4.3 and some approaches are presented.