Scalability of Peer Configuration Management in Logically Ad Hoc Networks

Current interest in ad hoc and peer-to-peer networking technologies prompts a re-examination of models for configuration management within these frameworks. In the future, network management methods may have to scale to millions of nodes within a single organization, with complex social constraints. In this paper, we discuss whether it is possible to manage the configuration of large numbers of network devices using well known and not so well known configuration models, and we discuss how the special characteristics of ad hoc and peer-to-peer networks are reflected in this problem.