Considerations on Policy-based Network Management

Policy-based Management has been the subject of extensive research over the last decade. Most research work on policies has concentrated in necessary fundamental aspects such as classification, policy language, conflict detection and most recently in policy representation and storage. Little work has been done in the area of the harmonic coexistence of policies and traditional, possibly hierarchical, management systems. Policies, apart from their high-level declarative nature, can be also seen as a vehicle for “late binding” functionality to management systems, allowing for their graceful evolution as requirements change. In this paper we are exploring the potentiality of designing “policy-aware” management systems, in which a line has to be carefully drawn between “hard-wired” functionality and policy logic.