Enhanced network management for online services

This paper focuses on the effective management of networks that support online services that require high availability and reliability, and quick reconfiguration response and fast reconstitution time, in the event of failures. In a service independent network, the network provider provides the network assets to the service provider. In such a paradigm, the service provider, for example an Internet service provider (ISP) would like to monitor the health of the network in a proactive manner. From the service provider's view the domain of interest usually includes link failures, node failures, local dial numbers impacted, capacity and resulting congestion. We describe algorithms and methodologies for translating faults to the various impacted objects and analyze the capacity impact due to the corresponding failures. We also describe the network management architecture typically used to deliver and distribute the results of those algorithms. Finally, we present some preliminary qualitative results on the application of methods that we are currently developing in order to build dynamic performance profiles ("signatures") of application-based traffic intensities, and therefore provide enhanced and intelligent on-line network analysis and control, for value-added on-line type of services (i.e. transaction access services).