Extending COPS-PR with Meta-Policies for Scalable Management of IP Networks

Abstract

During the past years, IP networks have grown considerably in size and complexity: the number and the variety of the connected devices have increased, new applications have emerged and Quality-of-Service is increasingly demanded. In such networks, traditional management techniques seem to suffer from significant scalability and efficiency limitations. Policy-Based Networking (PBN) has emerged as a promising paradigm for IP networks operation and management. In PBN, policy servers enforce network policies by sending the appropriate configuration data to the managed devices. IETF is currently developing COPS (Common Open Policy Service) and its extension for policy provisioning, COPS-PR, as the protocols to implement PBN. COPS-PR, although initially biased towards DiffServ, has received significant attention and seems efficient for several other management areas, such as accounting and IP filtering. However, in COPS-PR, the rigidity of the policy-enforcing mechanisms at the managed devices restricts the intelligence that can be pushed into them. This work attempts to raise these limitations by extending the COPS-PR protocol with meta-policies. Meta-policies are rules that can be stored and processed by the devices, independent of their semantics. They allow intelligence to be pushed towards the managed device, making in this way the scheme more efficient, scalable, distributed and robust.