On the standardisation of Web service management operations

Given the current interest in TCP/IP network management research towards Web services, it is important to recognise how standardisation can be achieved. This paper mainly focuses on the standardisation of operations and not management information. We state that standardisation should be done by standardising the abstract parts of a WSDL document, i.e. the interfaces and the messages. Operations can vary in granularity and parameter transparency, creating four extreme operation signatures, all of which have advantages and disadvantages

Deliverable DJRA1.2. Solutions and protocols proposal for the network control, management and monitoring in a virtualized network context

This deliverable presents several research proposals for the FEDERICA network, in different subjects, such as monitoring, routing, signalling, resource discovery, and isolation. For each topic one or more possible solutions are elaborated, explaining the background, functioning and the implications of the proposed solutions.This deliverable goes further on the research aspects within FEDERICA. First of all the architecture of the control plane for the FEDERICA infrastructure will be defined. Several possibilities could be implemented, using the basic FEDERICA infrastructure as a starting point. The focus on this document is the intra-domain aspects of the control plane and their properties. Also some inter-domain aspects are addressed. The main objective of this deliverable is to lay great stress on creating and implementing the prototype/tool for the FEDERICA slice-oriented control system using the appropriate framework. This deliverable goes deeply into the definition of the containers between entities and their syntax, preparing this tool for the future implementation of any kind of algorithm related to the control plane, for both to apply UPB policies or to configure it by hand. We opt for an open solution despite the real time limitations that we could have (for instance, opening web services connexions or applying fast recovering mechanisms). The application being developed is the central element in the control plane, and additional features must be added to this application. This control plane, from the functionality point of view, is composed by several procedures that provide a reliable application and that include some mechanisms or algorithms to be able to discover and assign resources to the user. To achieve this, several topics must be researched in order to propose new protocols for the virtual infrastructure. The topics and necessary features covered in this document include resource discovery, resource allocation, signalling, routing, isolation and monitoring. All these topics must be researched in order to find a good solution for the FEDERICA network. Some of these algorithms have started to be analyzed and will be expanded in the next deliverable. Current standardization and existing solutions have been investigated in order to find a good solution for FEDERICA. Resource discovery is an important issue within the FEDERICA network, as manual resource discovery is no option, due to scalability requirement. Furthermore, no standardization exists, so knowledge must be obtained from related work. Ideally, the proposed solutions for these topics should not only be adequate specifically for this infrastructure, but could also be applied to other virtualized networks.Postprint (published version

An ICT-oriented Management Solution for NGNs

NGN architecture reused several standards from the IP world, as exemplified by the Session Initiation Protocol SIP, which is ubiquitous in the majority of these network components. However, the NGN management architecture simply presented a very generic management model that follows TMN. Several management technologies are proposed, such as Web services, CORBA and SNMP, to implement management solutions. Network and systems management standardizing bodies currently promote newer technologies that aim to solve known shortcomings to these. This paper proposes a management solution for NGNs based on recent IP world technologies. The presented solution was implemented in the form of a middleware to manage NGN elements. This middleware was used in the management of an element belonging to the IP Multimedia Subsystem platform, namely the Policy and Charging Rules Function

An IDE for NETCONF management applications

The development of network and system management software typically requires data models definition, the creation of specific applications respecting the data model, and yet the implementation of communication interfaces. Skilled professionals usually perform such tasks in a predefined sequence and using different development solutions, but any error or lacks in the data model frequently force to repeat several time-consuming tasks. In this paper we present an integrated development framework that simplifies the construction of NETCONF management applications, from data model specification to deployment and evaluation. The framework is available at http://atnog.av.it.pt/∼ptavares/ yangplugin

Dynamic deployment of context-aware access control policies for constrained security devices

Securing the access to a server, guaranteeing a certain level of protection over an encrypted communication channel, executing particular counter measures when attacks are detected are examples of security requirements. Such requirements are identi ed based on organizational purposes and expectations in terms of resource access and availability and also on system vulnerabilities and threats. All these requirements belong to the so-called security policy. Deploying the policy means enforcing, i.e., con guring, those security components and mechanisms so that the system behavior be nally the one speci ed by the policy. The deployment issue becomes more di cult as the growing organizational requirements and expectations generally leave behind the integration of new security functionalities in the information system: the information system will not always embed the necessary security functionalities for the proper deployment of contextual security requirements. To overcome this issue, our solution is based on a central entity approach which takes in charge unmanaged contextual requirements and dynamically redeploys the policy when context changes are detected by this central entity. We also present an improvement over the OrBAC (Organization-Based Access Control) model. Up to now, a controller based on a contextual OrBAC policy is passive, in the sense that it assumes policy evaluation triggered by access requests. Therefore, it does not allow reasoning about policy state evolution when actions occur. The modi cations introduced by our work overcome this limitation and provide a proactive version of the model by integrating concepts from action speci cation languages

A web services based framework for efficient monitoring and event reporting.

Network and Service Management (NSM) is a research discipline with significant research contributions the last 25 years. Despite the numerous standardised solutions that have been proposed for NSM, the quest for an "all encompassing technology" still continues. A new technology introduced lately to address NSM problems is Web Services (WS). Despite the research effort put into WS and their potential for addressing NSM objectives, there are efficiency, interoperability, etc issues that need to be solved before using WS for NSM. This thesis looks at two techniques to increase the efficiency of WS management applications so that the latter can be used for efficient monitoring and event reporting. The first is a query tool we built that can be used for efficient retrieval of management state data close to the devices where they are hosted. The second technique is policies used to delegate a number of tasks from a manager to an agent to make WS-based event reporting systems more efficient. We tested the performance of these mechanisms by incorporating them in a custom monitoring and event reporting framework and supporting systems we have built, against other similar mechanisms (XPath) that have been proposed for the same tasks, as well as previous technologies such as SNMP. Through these tests we have shown that these mechanisms are capable of allowing us to use WS efficiently in various monitoring and event reporting scenarios. Having shown the potential of our techniques we also present the design and implementation challenges for building a GUI tool to support and enhance the above systems with extra capabilities. In summary, we expect that other problems WS face will be solved in the near future, making WS a capable platform for it to be used for NSM

Secure Configuration and Management of Linux Systems using a Network Service Orchestrator.

Manual management of the configuration of network devices and computing devices (hosts) is an error-prone task. Centralized automation of these tasks can lower the costs of management, but can also introduce unknown or unanticipated security risks. Misconfiguration (deliberate (by outsiders) or inadvertent (by insiders)) can expose a system to significant risks. Centralized network management has seen significant progress in recent years, resulting in model-driven approaches that are clearly superior to previous "craft" methods. Host management has seen less development. The tools available have developed in separate task-specific ways. This thesis explores two aspects of the configuration management problem for hosts: (1) implementing host management using the model-driven (network) management tools; (2) establishing the relative security of traditional methods and the above proposal for model driven host management. It is shown that the model-driven approach is feasible, and the security of the model driven approach is significantly higher than that of existing approaches

Suporte de monitorização baseada em NETCONF

Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e TelemáticaA necessidade de gestão dos equipamentos das redes tem juntado em volta de organismos normalizadores como o IETF e o DMTF, a comunidade académica e os fabricantes de equipamentos. A evolução das características das redes, como por exemplo a sua dimensão, o número e a heterogeneidade dos equipamentos interligados, e a crescente diversidade de serviços de rede têm vindo a alterar os requisitos de gestão e, por conseguinte, a criar a necessidade de novas tecnologias para gerir essas redes. A tecnologia de gestão SNMP surgiu em meados dos anos 80 e, apesar de um conjunto de defeitos que rapidamente lhe foram apontados, rapidamente se tornou a tecnologia de gestão de facto, sendo omnipresente na maioria dos equipamentos de rede e estando disponível sob a forma de imensas APIs e aplicações de gestão. Sendo uma tecnologia nascida de entre a comunidade de gestão de redes IP, não incluía outros detalhes relacionados com a gestão de sistemas e serviços que entretanto foram incluídos pelo DMTF na tecnologia WBEM, segundo uma lógica de gestão integrada. O WBEM inclui já tecnologias da web para representar e codificar a informação de gestão, de forma a fomentar a interoperabilidade da gestão dos equipamentos de diferentes modelos e fabricantes. Com o advento dos Web services, e dada as suas vantagens de rápido desenvolvimento e interoperabilidade, as entidades normalizadoras da área da gestão dos sistemas propuseram novas tecnologias como o WSDM-MUWS do OASIS e o WS-MAN do DMTF. Como forma de ultrapassar os problemas desde sempre apontados ao SNMP, especialmente os relacionados com a sua segurança e falta de escalabilidade para transporte de grandes quantidade de informação, o IETF desenvolveu uma nova tecnologia designada de NETCONF que utiliza a codificação XML e alternativas de transporte de informação seguras e fiáveis. Normalizou também uma linguagem para descrição da informação de gestão, o YANG, criada especificamente para ser utilizada com este protocolo. Neste trabalho, implementou-se uma solução de monitorização utilizando a tecnologia NETCONF, que efetua o transporte da informação de gestão em SOAP. A presente dissertação documenta a implementação da solução de monitorização NETCONF proposta e da respetiva avaliação, comparado as características e capacidades da tecnologia utilizada com as tecnologias de gestão SNMP e WBEM em termos de tráfego gerado, de eficiência de sinalização e de tempos de resposta. Da análise destes testes são tiradas ilações acerca do desempenho destes protocolos e da viabilidade do NETCONF como solução futura para a gestão e monitorização de redes.The need for management of network equipment has gathered around standard setting bodies like the IETF and the DMTF, the academic community and equipment manufacturers. The evolution of network characteristics such as its size, the number and heterogeneity of devices, and the growing diversity of network services are changing the management requirements and, therefore creating the need for new technologies to manage these networks. The SNMP management technology emerged in the mid 80s and, despite a number of defects that were pointed out, it quickly became the de facto management technology, is ubiquitous in most network equipment and is available in lots of APIs and management applications. Being a technology born from IP network management community, it did not include other details related to the management of systems and services which have been included in the DMTFs WBEM standard, for integrated management. WBEM already includes web-based technologies to represent and encode management information in order to enhance interoperability among the solutions and equipment from different manufacturers. With the advent of Web services, and given its advantages of rapid development and interoperability, entities standardizing management systems proposed new technologies such as the OASIS WSDM-MUWS and the DMTF WS-MAN. To overcome the problems pointed to SNMP, especially those related to its safety and lack of scalability to transport large amount of information, the IETF has developed a new technology called NETCONF that uses the XML encoding and several alternatives for secure and reliable transport of information. They also normalized a language for describing management information, YANG, created specifically for use with this protocol. In this work, we implemented a monitoring solution using NETCONF, which makes the transport of management information in SOAP. This dissertation documents this implementation, the relevant technical assessment of the proposal and compared the features and capabilities of the technology used with the WBEM and SNMP technologies in terms of generated traffic, coding efficiency and response times. From the analysis of these tests lessons are taken about the performance of these protocols and the feasibility of NETCONF as a solution for the future of network management and monitoring

Deliverable JRA1.1: Evaluation of current network control and management planes for multi-domain network infrastructure

This deliverable includes a compilation and evaluation of available control and management architectures and protocols applicable to a multilayer infrastructure in a multi-domain Virtual Network environment.The scope of this deliverable is mainly focused on the virtualisation of the resources within a network and at processing nodes. The virtualization of the FEDERICA infrastructure allows the provisioning of its available resources to users by means of FEDERICA slices. A slice is seen by the user as a real physical network under his/her domain, however it maps to a logical partition (a virtual instance) of the physical FEDERICA resources. A slice is built to exhibit to the highest degree all the principles applicable to a physical network (isolation, reproducibility, manageability, ...). Currently, there are no standard definitions available for network virtualization or its associated architectures. Therefore, this deliverable proposes the Virtual Network layer architecture and evaluates a set of Management- and Control Planes that can be used for the partitioning and virtualization of the FEDERICA network resources. This evaluation has been performed taking into account an initial set of FEDERICA requirements; a possible extension of the selected tools will be evaluated in future deliverables. The studies described in this deliverable define the virtual architecture of the FEDERICA infrastructure. During this activity, the need has been recognised to establish a new set of basic definitions (taxonomy) for the building blocks that compose the so-called slice, i.e. the virtual network instantiation (which is virtual with regard to the abstracted view made of the building blocks of the FEDERICA infrastructure) and its architectural plane representation. These definitions will be established as a common nomenclature for the FEDERICA project. Other important aspects when defining a new architecture are the user requirements. It is crucial that the resulting architecture fits the demands that users may have. Since this deliverable has been produced at the same time as the contact process with users, made by the project activities related to the Use Case definitions, JRA1 has proposed a set of basic Use Cases to be considered as starting point for its internal studies. When researchers want to experiment with their developments, they need not only network resources on their slices, but also a slice of the processing resources. These processing slice resources are understood as virtual machine instances that users can use to make them behave as software routers or end nodes, on which to download the software protocols or applications they have produced and want to assess in a realistic environment. Hence, this deliverable also studies the APIs of several virtual machine management software products in order to identify which best suits FEDERICA’s needs.Postprint (published version