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6 Conclusions and Outlook

To be able to provide efficient management for a demand-oriented ATM network and prevent simultaneously the occurrence of unsatisfying network states, a goal is certainly to achieve a self-regulating network management. This work suggested to collect knowledge about usual traffic characteristics, and use this knowledge as a base for an appropriate configuration of resource allocation parameters.

We presented a model, including the necessary parameters to (i) monitor the behaviour of the network, (ii) to act on, and (iii) to validate whether the performed actions have achieved the desired goal. The set of actions to be performed is also dependent on some fairness policies, which are user specific. Control mechanisms were introduced to validate whether the performed actions had achieved the expected result. Although all elements of the model were discussed, we concentrated on the specification of parameters to monitor the behaviour of the network and the definition of action values.

Our further work will focus on (i) testing the feasibility of the specified parameters in production environments, especially the regional testbed, (ii) the refinement of parameters (i.e., using other than average values) if appropriate, (iii) a formal description of the actions to be performed under certain fairness constraints (i.e., policies). Besides, a detailed development of the control part and its evaluation is necessary.



Anja Schuhknecht
Wed May 31 09:56:07 MET DST 1995