Dynamic protocol functionality in cognitive future internet elements

Composing communication protocols as needed is a topic researched for a long time with moving focus. Nevertheless the vast flexibility of these proposals also prevented the real world success: there was no management solution available that could cope with the many degrees of freedom such architectures offer. This paper discusses the Dynamic Protocol Composition (DPC) architecture developed in the Self-NET project which aims at integrating cognition and autonomics in self-managed networks by the Generic Cognitive Cycle consisting of three phases: Monitoring, Decision-Making and Execution. The presented DPC architecture is therefore designed to serve as an execution capability for a powerful and intelligent decision making process. Since the various potential use cases of DPC in autonomous networks differ heavily with respect to situation awareness and decision making, an example is given. Furthermore the architecture and operation of the DPC implementation is presented. First experiments on packet loss compensation show that dynamically applying Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) using DPC on routers allows to improve quality of service and network performance significantly without constantly adding load to the link concerned.