A Real-Time Management, Control and Information Transport Architecture for Broadband Networks

The Integrated Reference Model, a framework for the architecture of broadband networks, is outlined. It prescribes the rules governing the behavior of the network based on three fundamental principles: the Separation Principle, the Layering Principle and the Principle of Asynchronous Resource Management. It consists of the Traffic Control, the Management, and the Information Transport Architectures. The main requirement on these architectures is to guarantee quality of service as negotiated at call set up. The management model is based on the manager/agent paradigm of OSI Management. The traffic control model builds on a set of real-time databases and a set of distributed algorithms that interact by writing and reading onto these databases. These databases are part of a comprehensive Network Database capable of supporting monitoring, control, configuration and fault management tasks. The information transport model follows the OSI layering model. An example is given that highlights some of the implications of the chosen network architecture model.