The Use of Policy-Based Network Management - Research Paper Example

Policies are increasingly being employed to supervise multifarious communication networks. The reason of developing formal methods for Network Management is to build a methodology so that implementations of Network Management are able to be considered. Policy-based network management is a novel solution set that facilitate business related applications to carry out at precise levels for precise users. This paper will present a study on the Policy-based Network Management its working and its comparison to normal network management techniques. Introduction Policy-based Network Management or PBNM is the network management that is based on policy. The policy is the blend of regulations and services where these rules and regulations illustrate the conditions for resource access and management. A policy is appropriately described as a grouping of policy rules (Kenneth, 1998). Every policy rule is consists of a set of consequent set of events and conditions. The condition describes when the policy rule is can be implemented. Once, a policy rule is so started one or supplementary actions controlled by that policy rule may possibly then be executed. These events or actions are linked with either meeting or not meeting the set of conditions described in the policy rule (Mark, 1999). The Motivation behind the Policy-based Network Management: The mission of managing information technology resources turned out to be more and more complex as managers have to take heterogeneous systems, dissimilar networking applications, and scattered applications into concern. As the amount of resources to be administered raises the assignment of managing these devices and applications depends on several systems and dealer related matters. To avoid the operators from going down in too much point, the stage of pensiveness have need of to be raised in order to conceal system and network particulars. Strategies which are follow-on from the objectives of management describe the preferred performance of distributed heterogeneous networks and systems, and state means to implement this conduct. Policy offers a way of identifying and dynamically altering management approach with no coding policy addicted to the implementation. Policy based management has a lot of reimbursements of bringing steady, accurate, and understandable network systems. The profit of policy based management will cultivate as network systems turn out to be extra intricate and offer additional services like QoS and security service (Westerinen et al, 2001). Literature Review This part of the paper will present different studies regarding Policy-based Network Management and its implementation. Internet and rising web technologies are having a deep effect on how to do commerce now and in the future. Although it is harder than before for human administrators to run and supervise all the time more new network devices. Without the proper tools, a small number of enterprise networks will be proficient to present the applications that the industry demands, how will they be capable to successfully initiate new applications to exploit novel commerce opportunities (Westerinen et al, 2001). The challenges facing the business enterprise managers comprise: Network Congestion, conventional applications of the network at the present move violently with mission critical business applications for the comparable network bandwidth. E commerce applications continue to come into view at an outstanding rate. A novel wave of multimedia applications at the present starts to go into corporate Intranets voice and video would be able to hardly wait to link the bandwidth fight. Administrative Challenges: As novel applications come out, the business enterprise network has to be capable to identify the relative resource precedence of these applications that struggle with on hand applications (Mark, 1999). Network Complexity: each network is made up of a collection of elements; those are able to come from a range of vendors; however they must still work jointly. For the basis of this heterogeneity and the need of complete standardization, managing a network with more than a handful of constituents be able to need a large amount of capabilities (Mark, 1999). Security: The network manager is faced with the multifarious job of meeting inner and outer safety/security requirements while still present uncomplicated and timely access to network resources to certified users. One method to think of a policy proscribed network is to primary model the network as a state machine and after that employ policy to organize which state a strategy controlled device should be in or is permissible to be in at some given time. Given this technique, a policy is a illustration of a business purposes to be applied in the administration of domain and is functional by means of a set of policy regulations, which describe how those business utilities will be met (Mark, 1999). An instance policy: Policy rules may possibly be united into policy groups. These groups possibly are attached, to indicate a hierarchy of policies. A policy rule is consists of a set of situations and a correspondent set of actions. This combination in result describes a series of events to be initiated when the equivalent set of situation is either fulfilled or not satisfied. Every policy rule is a declarative statement consisting of a Boolean expression that explains circumstances to which the policy is relevant (Mark, 1999). When the expression is perfect, one set of events is in progress and when false, a dissimilar set of actions is started. A rule is able to be articulated as a condition statement like an IF THEN ELSE statement. We can prioritize Policy rules. One common cause for doing this is to articulate a general policy that has a general case with a small number of explicit exceptions (Westerinen et al, 2001). Policy based management is an expression which has a lot of meanings, but we characterize it as a technology that offers an automatic mechanism to build up a system according to rules. In an ideal finishing, these rules would be described at a high level, and they would be late bound, meaning that it would be probable to alter them in the field with no deploying novel software. Thus, Policy based network management brings two functional benefits to network management jobs. Initially, the thought abilities make simpler the administration job, permitting the administrator to focus on what is necessary rather than how it is attained. This separation from low-level information of particular protocols or devices is able to help in de-skilling the assignment and speeding up configuration activities. Secondly, Policy based network management can be utilized to act in response in a pre-defined way to particular conditions in the network, offering an additional rapid and dependable response and, potentially, an additional dynamic use of resources (Bhatia, 1999). As Policy based network management is a rule-based thought, it is considered to be mainly well-matched to procedure-led areas, such as this naval situation and other elevated assurance situations. A great deal of the on hand effort in policy based network management is based on commercial networks that inclined to be wired, static, structured, locally directed and frequently over-provisioned in terms of resources (Westerinen et al, 2001). These policy based network management solutions as a result tend to be paying attention on activities like rolling out a general configuration from a central server to a set of users, inside a discrete administrative domain. In difference, naval networks of the kind described above will be dynamic, together in terms of structure and resources. Multiple administrative domains will have need of helping, and if possible interoperating at a systems level and a distributed management resolution will be essential for a number of scenarios. In addition, severe constraints are located on the potential results for the reason that of the elevated assurance needed regarding the integrity, confidentiality and accessibility of the network, and required for multilevel security (Mark, 1999). Techniques: This part of the paper presents different techniques of the PBNM and how these techniques help us in different ways and provide us security constraints and high assurance solutions. Potential problems of employing PBNM techniques in this environment include the following: Like a situation like military nature we have need of more security and rapid reaction where this management technique provides such techniques to handle this situation easily. Multilevel Security: Networks at multiple security levels will coexist on platforms. Naturally, this necessitates the opening of air gaps or cryptographic taking apart to put off leakage of information and diminish vulnerability to attack. So this technique helps us to diminish such risks as compared to ordinary network management system (Bhatia, 1999). Configuration correctness: A PBNM system makes decisions on inputs it has established and causes the arrangement of devices to adjust in reaction to those inputs. The correct working of the system therefore depends on it obtaining precise information on both the present conditions and the current state of the devices it is managing. This practice helps us to do this in a very effective way as compared to ordinary network management system (Westerinen et al, 2001). Flexibility and Availability: As the PBNM system would be dependable for managing a high security dynamic network; it would be required to have a high availability, so we have more flexibility and accessibility as compared to ordinary network management system (Strassner, 2003). Comparison This section of the paper presents a comparison between policy based and normal network management methods. We can view that as compared to network system that does employ policy-based networking, it is still safer and by applying mostly or wholly configured by means of policies, it is easier to manage by means of policies when the policy system would be able to understand the on hand configuration. Therefore, there is a need to offer such policy-based networking systems with a standard way to sense and recognize the current network configuration. In the normal network management approaches, when a policy is manually organized and planned to reflect the configuration of a non-policy-based network, the administrator has no simple method to confirm that the novel policy will work with the equipment and services to which it is to be functional. Therefore, there is as well as need for an automatic method to decide when one policy gratifies the abilities of the equipment and services to which it is to be concerned (Westerinen et al, 2001). Another disadvantage of the preceding normal network management approaches is that there is no scheme to choose whether the manually organized policy is reasonable /feasible when the network is in process. For instance, the network may have enough resources to assure a exacting request, but inadequate resources to gratify all the potential number of requirements, like that the policy is infeasible. Therefore there is a need for an automatic method to decide when one policy is feasible (Bhatia, 1999). Still one more disadvantage of the prior normal network management approaches is that there is no way to compare the constraint and configurations, requirements offered by the effect or " resulting /consequent" of a policy with the definite configurations at hand in the network, its equipment or services. For instance, an administrator may possibly manually organize a policy that stated as "Upon condition X, set up service Y," but the network below management has no means to set up service Y. Consequently, there is a require for an automatic method to confirm that the configuration required by a policy is probable, and to report dissimilarities and inconsistencies in what the policy demands contrasted to what is probable in the network (Hoover, 2001). Now this paper presents few advantages of the policy based network management against normal network management approaches those are extracted from different studies: It allows vibrant alternation of policies and uses again these components with diverse policies. Priority policies are able to turn out preferential behavior for mission imperative applications on top of the excellent effort treatment for other flows. Policies are able to grow performance of the applications that are essentially significant to the business enterprise, and carry a multiplicity of implicit reimbursement by virtue of augmented productivity with those applications (Strassner, 2003). Mangers are able to get hold of optimized utilization of the present network infrastructure, and slow down the cycle of adding extra bandwidth to the network to get better its working and performance. Policy can increase effectiveness of the personnel who controls it, and decrease the time, price, and troubles linked with individual device configuration (Saperia, 2008).s Managers can gain optimized employ of the present network infrastructure. Policy can develop competence of the personnel who administer and manage it, and reduce the problems connected with individual device configuration. In contrast with prior traditional network management techniques, the policy based approach presents an additional flexible and customizable management result and solution Conclusion Here concluding the overall discussion, we have seen what Policy-based Network Management is? Its implementation, motivation, and then we also studied its literature review and techniques, and lastly the comparison. We have seen that network management market has developed over time with the growth of software and hardware resolutions that has facilitated administrators to sustain and follow the status of enterprise networks. Though, networks have turned out to be further heterogeneous and multifaceted that are gradually mission critical. This has fundamentally influenced the network management resolutions that are developed. Policy-based network management has come out as a novel paradigm for managing network particularly for QoS and security. Although trends and conditions are varying gradually and they are required better ways and techniques to handle and manage network. Now days we can see lot of customary solutions or in this medium but best one is which fulfills network management requirement and as well as allow services QoS and security. Policy-based network management was an attempt to achieve this. A lot of work is still required to have better network management system. References 1. Bhatia, R. Kohli, M. and Virmani, A. 1999. ‘A policy-based network management system’; In Proceeding of the International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Techniques and Apps. 2. Hoover, C.L., Hansen, J. Koopman, P. and Tamboli, S. 2001. ‘The AMARANTH framework: policy-based quality of service management for high-assurance computing’; International Journal of Reliability, Quality and Safety Engineering, Vol. 8, No. 4. 3. Jon Saperia. 2008. ‘Policy-Based Configuration Management with SNMP’; to be published in The Simple Times (www.simple-times.org) accessed on 14-11-2008. 4. Mark, L. Stevens and Walter J. Weiss, 1999. ‘Policy based Management for IP Networks’; Bell Labs, Technical Journal, Network Management, Vol. 4 No. 5. Strassner, j. 2003. ‘Policy-based Network Management: Solutions for the Next Generation’; Morgan-Kaufman Publishers. 6. SwitchSofi Systems, Inc. 1997 ‘Understanding Policy Bused Network Management’; 7. Westerinen, A. 2001. ‘Terminology for policy-based management’; RFC 3198, IETF. Read More