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

Power Systems Monitoring and Control using Telecom Network Management Standards

Historically, different solutions have been developed for power systems control and telecommunications network management environments. The former was characterized by proprietary solutions, while the latter has been involved for years in a strong standardization process guided by criteria of openness. Today, power systems control standardization is in progress, but it is at an early stage compared to the telecommunications management area, especially in terms of information modeling. Today, control equipment tends to exhibit more computational power, and communication lines have increased their performance. These trends hint at some conceptual convergence between power systems and telecommunications networks from a management perspective. This convergence leads us to suggest the application of well-established telecommunications management standards for power systems control. This paper shows that this is a real medium-to-long term possibility

SNMP Trace Analysis: Results of Extra Traces

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SMMP) was introduced in the late 1980s. Since then, several evolutionary protocol changes have taken place, resulting in the SNMP version 3 framework (SNMPv3). Extensive use of SNMP has led to significant practical experience by both network operators and researchers. Since recently, researchers are in the possession of real world SNMP traces. This allows researchers to analyze the real world application of SNMP. A publication of 2007 made a significant start with this. However, real world trace analysis demands a continual approach, due to changing circumstances (e.g., regarding the network and SNMP engine implementations). Therefore, this paper reports on a lot more traces than in the mentioned paper, which are also more recent

Developing an SNMP agent protocol entity with object oriented Perl

The Damocles project at the University of Twente is developing an SNMP prototyping vehicle. The motivation for such a vehicle stems from the fact that the IETF will develop new versions of SNMP in response to evolving user needs. Whereas the transition to newer versions is attractive from a functional or performance point of view, the effort and cost involved in such a transition should not be underestimated. The Damocles project investigates how modular design and implementation methods and OO techniques facilitate modification and reduce the effort and cost of version transition. In this paper, we discuss an SNMP agent protocol entity written in OO Perl. We discuss the design and implementation of the protocol entity, and how this development effort contributes to the objectives of the Damocles project

Deliverable DJRA1.3: Tool prototype for creating and stitching multiple network resources for virtual infrastructures

This document describes the prototype FEDERICA Slice Tool developed for the virtualization of network elements in FEDERICA and for creating and stitching network resources over this virtual infrastructure. An SNMP-based resource discovery prototype is also introduced as a new functionality to be integrated in the tool.The deliverable also presents aviability study for the use of traffic prioritization in the FEDERICA infrastructure and some network performance measurements on a real slice within FEDERICA.This document reports the final results of JRA1.2 Activity in the development of a tool prototype for creating sets ofvirtual resourcesinFEDERICA.The prototype goal is to simplify and automate part of the work for NOC.The tool may also serve,with different privileges, a FEDERICA user to operate on his/her slice. The tool described here was designed with the objective of providing an interactive application with a graphical interface to operate on resources for the NOC and the end users (researchers). The tool simplify the creation and configuration of resources in a slice and it is a mandatory step to ensure scalability of the NOC effort. It offers an interactive Graphical User Interface that translates the users’ actions to commands in the substrate (networknodesandV-nodes)andslice elements(VirtualMachines).User accounts may be created for the NOC and for researchers, each with specific privileges to enable different sets of capabilities. The NOC account has full access to all the resources in the substrate, while each user’account has full access only to the virtual resources in his/her slice. The tool has been developed using the Java programming language as Open Source code and relies on the open source Globus® Toolkit. Testing has been performed in a laboratory environment and on some FEDERICA substrate equipment (1switch, 2VMwareServers) in their standard configuration. For testing the router, web services and GUI an additional computer was used, using a public IP address.Postprint (published version

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

A trustworthy mobile agent infrastructure for network management

Despite several advantages inherent in mobile-agent-based approaches to network management as compared to traditional SNMP-based approaches, industry is reluctant to adopt the mobile agent paradigm as a replacement for the existing manager-agent model; the management community requires an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary, use of mobile agents. Furthermore, security for distributed management is a major concern; agent-based management systems inherit the security risks of mobile agents. We have developed a Java-based mobile agent infrastructure for network management that enables the safe integration of mobile agents with the SNMP protocol. The security of the system has been evaluated under agent to agent-platform and agent to agent attacks and has proved trustworthy in the performance of network management tasks