Dynamic deployment and configuration of differentiated services using active networks

This paper presents the detailed components of the Future Active IP Networks (FAIN) [1] [2] [3] active node framework based on the novel Virtual Environment (VE) concept. It also presents the dynamic and autonomic deployment of differentiated services and the configuration capabilities thereof enabled. The FAIN node supports the dynamic deployment and instantiation of multiple active VEs, each one of them capable of hosting multiple Execution Environments (EE) and supporting communication among different EEs in the same node. The EEs may, in turn, be deployed and instantiated on demand thereby introducing new features and functionality in the node according to new requirements and arising needs. We tested the FAIN active network by developing and dynamically deploying a control EE, which was designed and tested for the QoS configuration of the Diffserv-enabled pan-European FAIN testbed [4]. The work presented in this paper was performed in the European Union research an d development project under the Information Society Technologies programme.