Foley, SN, Fitzgerald, W, Bistarelli, S, O'Sullivan, B, Foghlu, MO;

Principles of Secure Network Configuration: Towards A Formal Basis For Self-Configuration

Autonomic Principles of Ip Operations and Management, Proceedings

2006

June

Validated

1

()

168

180

The challenge for autonomic network management is the provision of future network management systems that have the characteristics of self-management, self-configuration, self-protection and self-healing, in accordance with the high level objectives of the enterprise or human end-user. This paper proposes an abstract model for network configuration that is intended to help understand fundamental underlying issues in self-configuration. We describe the cascade problem in self-configuring networks: when individual network components that are securely configured are connected together (in an apparently secure manner), a configuration cascade can occur resulting in a mis-configured network. This has implications for the design of self-configuring systems and we discuss how a soft constraint-based framework can provide a solution..