Towards a unified architecture for resilience, survivability and autonomic fault-management for self-managing networks

The emergence of self-managing networks can be seen as an enabler for increased dependability, reliability and robustness of the network layer. All these features are significant for the services and applications relying on the network infrastructure. This paper explores the links between traditional Fault-Management functions belonging to the management plane and the fundamental network functions for Resilience and Survivability embedded inside the protocol modules of a node/device. This results in an architectural framework that allows nodes/devices to implement the converging aspects of Fault-Management (now becoming autonomic), Resilience and Survivability in a self-managing network. The components and adaptation mechanisms of the proposed framework will make the network layer more robust and application/service aware. Thus, the dependability, reliability, and adaptability of the upper layer services and applications are expected to increase.