Management of the Future Internet

Motivation

The goal of this Dagstuhl Seminar on “Management of the Future Internet” is to discuss the development of the provisioning of high quality Future Internet services to everybody by means of modern Network Management methods. This can be achieved only in an effective manner, if an adequate management plane capable of configuring, monitoring, and controlling the Future Internet services delivered is available. Such a management plane has been the focus of research and development in the context of traditional data and voice networks. However, the development of tomorrow’s Future Internet providing integrated voice and data services over multiple access networks puts new major challenges to this area in terms of scalability, dynamicity, security, and automation.

This Dagstuhl seminar addresses the above mentioned challenges for the management plane. Its main objective is to extend the current knowledge and expertise in the area of the network and service management plane, critical to every network.

Objective

The main objective of this Dagstuhl Seminar is to work together to structure research and development in the field of network management with the aim of determining the key functionality of the next generation management framework for the Future Internet. Thus, this resulting seminar aims at:

• Collecting and synthesizing requirements towards a management framework from all application domains and network infrastructures,
• Developing a possible consensus on novel paradigms and models for meeting the requirements of integrated service provisioning in the Future Internet,
• Structuring and integrating the research areas in network and service management to strengthen the Future Internet innovation in this discipline.

In a nutshell, the “Management of the Future Internet” Seminar shall help researchers and network operators to develop further framework mechanisms and design respective protocols and approaches for services from network operations and network business perspectives.

Research Questions Addressed

Within the “Management of the Future Internet” Dagstuhl Seminar, the functionality of existing work on management of the Internet technology, traditional management approaches, and economic management approaches, especially with respect to its capabilities to allow for an integrated approach of design and deployment of future networks that incorporate new services, will be considered. More specifically, the following questions shall be addressed: Management Mechanisms for the Future Internet: While a number of Future Internet architectures are being debated the set of relevant and highly related management principles have not been addressed so far.

Fault, Configuration, and Security Operation in the Future Internet:
The design, modelling, and evaluation of algorithms in the three functional areas have to cope with large scale systems. Solutions for the Future Internet are to be discussed with respect to architectural and functional patterns for management frameworks in large scale analysis.

Intra and Inter-Domain Autonomic Management in the Future Internet:
For fixed networks the degree of automated inter-domain QoS management, self-management of MPLS optical networks, the automated intra- and inter-domain fault-management i.e., service recovery, and resilience need to be determined.

Economic Network and Service Management in the Future Internet:
In support of a technically feasible approach of operating a network for numerous commercial services in an efficient manner, technology-wise and economically, advanced network and service management functionality is required.

Commercial operator-oriented mechanisms (Traffic Management):
The investigation of a suitable management architecture, to form a platform in support of the exploitation of economic traffic management schemes for overlay services in a world-wide networking environment is crucial due to the increasing overlay traffic amount. Thus, relevant commercial and operational view points have to be considered in combination.