Autonomic Network Management Fundamentals

Autonomic network management is a promising approach to reduce the cost and the complexity of managing network infrastructures. It relates to the capability of the network to fulfill self-configuration, self-optimization, self-protection and self-healing functionalities. To achieve these properties, a network management solution based on autonomic architecture is paramount. Such an architecture should continuously monitor network resources, analyze the collected data, plan adaptation tasks and execute the decided plans on the network. The objective of this book consists in introducing the fundamentals of autonomic network management and presenting a reference autonomic architecture taking advantage of existing autonomic solutions while avoiding their shortcomings. The operation of the designed autonomic architecture is presented through several use-cases in different dynamic environments.