Challenges for federated, autonomic network management in the Future Internet

Regardless of which networking protocols or technologies form the core of the future Internet it is clear that the environment as a whole will need to support a very broad range of business and user interaction modes. In todays Internet we observe the growing trend for services to be both provided and consumed by loosely coupled value networks of consumers, providers and combined consumer/providers. In this paper we argue that this trend has major implications for network management in the future Internet. In particular, we discuss six research challenges that we believe need to be addressed by the network management community if the potential for the future Internet to flexibly support value networks is to be realized.