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4 Constructing self-regulating Network Management

 

  
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 mostgif 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.





next up previous
Next: 4.1 What could happen Up: Preventing Rather Repairing - Previous: 3 Resource Allocation and



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