Summary of stability of adaptive service level agreements

We consider the implications of feedback on policy-based management of networked services, paying special attention to the case where monitoring of service level agreements is used to alter policy dynamically. Using a simple model, we show that there are policies that are unstable under service provision, i.e. provide no reliable service levels (QoS), and that there are policies that can yield stable behaviour; hence we conclude that policy rule combinatorics can damage quality of service goals.