Framework for distributed autonomic self‐healing in fixed IPv6 networks

A main requirement for the Future Internet is to enable self‐management behaviors facilitating the network to adapt to changing conditions and self‐heal in the face of erroneous states. On the basis of Autonomic Fault‐Management principles, this paper proposes a framework consisting of a set of components operating inside the network elements and allowing the devices to collaboratively realize self‐healing. In that context, Autonomic Fault‐Management is intuitively constituted by the detection of the presence of faulty conditions, followed in turn by the self‐diagnosis and identification of the corresponding root causes, and completed consequently by the removal of the identified root causes and their effects. The proposed framework implements a distributed control loop that interacts with the network operations personnel in case the current erroneous state is not resolvable by means of Autonomic Fault‐Management. We argue that there are a number of mutual benefits between our proposed framework and the IPv6 protocol suite. This is demonstrated by a case study that illustrates these benefits and shows how the capabilities of IPv6 can be enhanced through the self‐healing mechanisms of the proposed framework. Finally, the prototype implementation used for the case study is analyzed in terms of scalability and overhead produced in the network nodes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.