Active Networks

IEEE Open Architectures and Network Programming Proceedings

Active Networks

This volume of the LNCS series contains the proceedings of the 5th Internat- nal Working Conference on Active Networks (IWAN 2003) held in the ancient cultural city of Kyoto, Japan. This year we received 73 submissions. The increasing number indicates that Active Networks continues to be an attractive ?eld of research. Through - reful reviewing and discussion, our program committee decided to fully accept 21 papers. Three papers were conditionally accepted, and were included after shepherding by members of the technical program committee. This volume thus includes these 24 papers which were presented at IWAN 2003. Additional papers were presented in a poster session at the conference. The best paper award went to Kenneth L. Calvert, James N. Gri?oen, - jati Imam, and Jiangbo Li (University of Kentucky) for “Challenges in Imp- menting an ESP Service,” which begins these proceedings and which began the papers in the High Performance & Network Processors session. Papers in these proceedings are organized into seven sessions: High-Level Active Network - plications, Low-Level Active Network Applications, Self-Organization of Active Services, Management in Active Networks, Experiences with Service Engin- ring for Active Networks, and Selected Topics in Active Networks, ranging from risk management to context-aware handover and peer-to-peer communications.

Active Networks and Active Network Management

Active networking is an exciting new paradigm in digital networking that has the potential to revolutionize the manner in which communication takes place. It is an emerging technology, one in which new ideas are constantly being formulated and new topics of research are springing up even as this book is being written. This technology is very likely to appeal to a broad spectrum of users from academia and industry. Therefore, this book was written in a way that enables all these groups to understand the impact of active networking in their sphere of interest. Information services managers, network administrators, and e-commerce developers would like to know the potential benefits of the new technology to their businesses, networks, and applications. The book introduces the basic active networking paradigm and its potential impacts on the future of information handling in general and on communications in particular. This is useful for forward-looking businesses that wish to actively participate in the development of active networks and ensure a head start in the integration of the technology in their future products, be they applications or networks. Areas in which active networking is likely to make significant impact are identified, and the reader is pointed to any related ongoing research efforts in the area. The book also provides a deeper insight into the active networking model for students and researchers, who seek challenging topics that define or extend frontiers of the technology. It describes basic components of the model, explains some of the terms used by the active networking community, and provides the reader with taxonomy of the research being conducted at the time this book was written. Current efforts are classified based on typical research areas such as mobility, security, and management. The intent is to introduce the serious reader to the background regarding some of the models adopted by the community, to outline outstanding issues concerning active networking, and to provide a snapshot of the fast-changing landscape in active networking research. Management is a very important issue in active networks because of its open nature. The latter half of the book explains the architectural concepts of a model for managing active networks and the motivation for a reference model that addresses limitations of the current network management framework by leveraging the powerful features of active networking to develop an integrated framework. It also describes a novel application enabled by active network technology called the Active Virtual Network Management Prediction (AVNMP) algorithm. AVNMP is a pro-active management system; in other words, it provides the ability to solve a potential problem before it impacts the system by modeling network devices within the network itself and running that model ahead of real time.