Decentralized management of multimedia network using active network technology

Abstract

[Abstract]: Though being centralized, traditional approaches of network management have accomplished their overall mission that is to provide efficient management of underlying heterogeneous distributed networks. However the size of networks has been growing, and so has the number of novel applications and protocols running on the networks. These new services raise more stringent requirements, and significantly increase the complexity of network administration. Apparently the traditional approaches to network management are no longer adequate for the management of multimedia networks. Much research has been carried out in past years which mainly deployed the decentralization technique. These decentralized approaches are at most a step toward improving the centralized approach, but still not capable of efficiently managing multimedia networks. In this paper, we study a new approach to multimedia network management. The new approach, which relies on active networking technology and therefore called active approach, enables the network elements to execute functions or programs. In contrast to traditional network management strategies which resort to the centralized approach, following this approach yields a decentralized framework, which enables the network components or elements to be responsible for their own administrative chores. The administrative activities are implemented by a group of management functions embedded in the network elements. After analyzing several functions of this kind, we realized that the communication between the managed elements or stations presents a serious security concern. To tackle this problem, we also present a set of protocols for network elements to transmit and authenticate the functions or executable programs among the network stations. The protocols guarantee efficient communication and secure execution of the transmitted functions.