Management of Active Networks

Active networks provide the possibility to perform computations within the network. This feature introduces greater flexibility, but more complexity as well. Therefore, a sound management of active networks is a prerequisite to the acceptance of such networks. Management of large complex systems can be improved with the introduction of further abstraction levels and with moving the responsibility for the management down the line. Network management applications have two basic tasks to perform: operation of a node and control of message execution. In active networks there is a need for debugging functions a user has injected into the network. For operation and debugging, the monitoring of events occurring within an active network, and visualizing it, helps performing these tasks. Utilized and well scaling mechanisms for monitoring active networks are node clustering, event abstraction and filtering which have been applied to the presented prototypical implementation. We further propose a framework for monitoring and managing the active network.