Autonomic Networking

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Autonomic Networking follows the concept of Autonomic Computing, an initiative started by IBM in 2001. Its ultimate aim is to create self-managing networks to overcome the rapidly growing complexity of the Internet and other networks and to enable their further growth, far beyond the size of today.

1 Increasing size and complexity
2 Autonomic nervous system
3 Principles of autonomic networking
4 See also
5 External links
- 5.1 Research projects
- 5.2 Blogs and Wikis

[edit] Increasing size and complexity

The ever-growing management complexity of the Internet caused by its rapid growth is seen by some experts as a major problem that limits its usability in the future.

What's more, increasingly popular smartphones, PDAs, networked audio and video equipment, and game consoles need to be interconnected. Pervasive Computing not only adds features, but also burdens existing networking infrastructure with more and more tasks that sooner or later will not be manageable by human intervention alone.

Another important aspect is the price of manually controlling huge numbers of vitally important devices of current network infrastructures.

[edit] Autonomic nervous system

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is the part of the nervous system of the higher life forms that is not consciously controlled. It regulates bodily functions and the activity of specific organs. As proposed by IBM, future communication systems might be designed in a similar way to the ANS.

[edit] Principles of autonomic networking

Consequently, it is currently under research by many research projects, how principles and paradigms of mother nature might be applied to networking.

[edit] Compartmentalization

Instead of a layering approach, autonomic networking targets a more flexible structure termed compartmentalization.

[edit] Function re-composition

The goal is to produce an architectural design that enables flexible, dynamic, and fully autonomic formation of large-scale networks in which the functionalities of each constituent network node are also composed in an autonomic fashion

[edit] Atomization

Functions should be divided into atomic units to allow for maximal re-composition freedom.

[edit] Closed control loop

A fundamental concept of Control theory, the closed control loop, is among the fundamental principles of autonomic networking. A closed control loop maintains the properties of the controlled system within desired bounds by constantly monitoring target parameters.