Towards automating overlay network management

Overlay networks are becoming widely used for content delivery because they provide effective and reliable services that are not otherwise available. However, they can negatively affect each other as well as the underlying network. A management system that controls and adapts their behavior is therefore needed. This will meet not only the specific demands of the users but also those of the network and service providers. This paper presents a novel approach to the issue of automating overlay network management. In contrast to existing management approaches which require static a priori policy configurations, policies are created dynamically. A policy layer consists of a set of policy enforcement points and policy decision points. This is used to capture the goals of users, services, and networks into network-level objectives. The behavior of the overlay network is adapted to the changing conditions in its environment. The creation, adaptation, and termination of overlays are achieved through policies. Policies are generated and enforced on the fly from the context information of the user, the network and the service provider. The new approach provides users and applications with more flexibility to dynamically change their quality-of-service requirements while maintaining smooth quality-of-service delivery. We show the advantages of our architecture and provide simulation results to verify its effectiveness.