A Policy Creation and Enforcement Environment for an IP Network

Abstract

There is an increasing number of applications designed to run on the Internet whose Quality of Service (QoS) requirement is higher than the current offering from the IP network that being best effort. There has been a call by many in the Internet Community to change the way in which the well trusted IP protocol works so as to provide a level of QoS better than best effort. Numerous protocols have been suggested that could enhance the QoS on the Internet. In changing the workings on the Internet we must carefully consider which is the best option. One approach to IP QoS is the use of policies to enforce QoS. One of the problems of using policies to support QoS is how to create policies on the basis of an Service Level Specification (SLS).

This dissertation describes the design and implementation of a framework which supports the creation and deployment of policies on to an IP network.

The framework consists of a number of components. The first component is a Policy Enforcement Point which is used to deploy policies on to routers. The second component is the Policy Management Tool, this component allows users to deploy a policy on to the network. The final component of the framework is the policy creation tool. The policy creation tool makes it possible for a user to enter a required SLS, or it will recommend a policy close to the required SLS and how to change it to match the required SLS.

The final part of this dissertation describes an application that was developed which demonstrated the capabilities of this framework.