Autonomic Networking: Prototype Implementation of the Policy Continuum

The focus of new service development continues to move from network services towards application services. This is driven by many factors, such as converged networks, ambient networks and seamless mobility. These and other efforts enable customers to move from one service provider to another based on the availability of desired application services, as well as metrics concerning their performance (e.g., reliability and cost). In order to enable rapid deployment of these new services, policy becomes paramount. This paper presents first experiences with the implementation of the policy continuum, which represents one of the cornerstones of Autonomic Networking. It allows for the transformation of high-level (e.g. business) policies towards low-level (e.g. device) policies and enables seamless mobility and automated network and resource configuration. Based on a novel architecture, this paper shows our first proof of concept implementation of the policy continuum with results from a simulated network.