ReActive network management architectures and routing

The network management research community has focused its interest on management architectures for future IP packet networks that could enable the provisioning of different levels of QoS over the same infrastructure. There is a number of proposals for managing enhanced IP networks (MPLS-enabled, Differentiated/Integrated Services) using either traditional management schemes or the new paradigm inspired by the policy based schemes. Most of these proposals support a proactive management model of services and network elements. We investigate the use of a reactive model of management focusing on resource allocation and we propose a candidate routing protocol. We also present results about its performance in the steady state as compared to those of link-state protocols.