Addressing some challenges in autonomic monitoring in self-managing networks

Abstract

Self-monitoring is one of the key expected capabilities of an autonomic systenm An autonomic system can be a single network node or the entire network as an entity, having the ability to automatically adjust its behaviour based on the conditions in which the system and its components work.Self-monitoring for the purposes of self-configuration, cooperative event detection by a number of systems in a network, knowledge/imformation distribution, service-diagnosis and selfprotection requires a number of challenges/questions to be addressed. In this paper, we present the concepts behind selfmonitoring as a capability of a single node and as a capability of a network that is considered as an entity. We also discuss the challenges and questions to be addressed when designing and deploying self-monitoring mechanism for a single node and for an entire network and, we present some solutions to these chaUenges. Because self-monitoring is broad, we imit our focus to self-monitoring applied to inbound/outbound protocolspecific traffic at some point(s). As part of the solution to some challenges we try to address, we introduce the concept of On-Demand Monitoring (ODM) of protocol-specific traffic.Index Terms-Self-monitoring, on-demand monitoring, dynanic on-demand SNMP micro MIBs for exploiting the power of protocol/traffic analysers.