Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published online 9 July 2004 Self-aware management of IP networks with QoS guarantees By Francine Krief* ,† Self-aware management allows the network to react and to adapt to changes of situation. In this paper an architecture is described for self- aware management of IP networks offering QoS guarantees. This architecture uses policy-based management and multi-agent systems. The originality of the present approach lies in the intention to give a real autonomy to the components intervening in the chain of services in terms of internal decisions and configuration. Our solution allows the self- configuration, self-provisioning and self-monitoring of service as well as the proactive service level agreement management. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Francine Krief is an Associate Professor in the LIPN laboratory at the University of Paris XIII. Her areas of research are network management and the ambient internet. *Correspondence to: Francine Krief, LIPN Laboratory, University of Paris XIII, Avenue Jean-Baptiste Clément 99, 93430 Villetaneuse, France. † E-mail: krief@lipn.univ-paris13.fr 1. Introduction T he need for automating the supervision activity is today a crucial element of the telecommunication networks. It is due to the increasing need for quality of service (QoS) by users as well as the growing complexity of man- agement functions which allow its assurance and its provisioning, the difficulty of finding people qualified enough to control this complexity, and the need for cost control related to this activity. Indeed, in the current market situation, the opera- tors seek means of reducing the investments and the operational expenditure. In this context, the reduction in human intervention in provisioning and network management asks for an ever- increasing level of automation of the network processes (the control plan) and of the manage- ment systems (the management plan). Particularly, the introduction of such a level of automation reduces greatly the tasks of the operator in the ser- vices provisioning and assurance. This tendency to create a network forever more autonomous and service-oriented is called, in the marketing language, a ‘Self-Aware Network’. This concept implies the development of a data network infra- structure by the functional extension of the control plan. The level of autonomy required is reached by introducing the operational objectives and the parameters to be followed in the infrastructure, as well as by providing respective monitoring and adaptation means. The need for a management INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NETWORK MANAGEMENT Int. J. Network Mgmt 2004; 14: 351–364 (DOI: 10.1002/nem.532)