Applications

There are many areas and domains where the techniques developed for policy based networking can be applied. Some of the areas where policies can be used to advantage are described on this page. Policies can also be applied to many other areas, and the list is intended to be illustrative, rather than exhaustive.

SLA Support in Enterprise Networks

There is a growing need to support SLAs (Service Level Agreements) in different business environments. The SLA within a network typically specify performance objectives that need to be supported within an enterprise. The performance objectives provide the higher level policies that need to be enforced within the network. An enterprise may choose to support SLAs using various technologies, e.g. Differentiated Services over an IP network. The Policy management software translates performance objectives into DiffServ rate control and marking policies, and distributes them to the different routers and servers within the network.

For more information, please refer to our paper on supporting SLAs in Enterprise Networks.

Virtual Private Networks using IP-sec

The configuration of IP-sec based secure communications is a complex chore for most network administrators. Within the policy based paradigm for IP-sec management, the higher layer of policies specify the type of secure network that needs to be provisioned within an enterprise or the open network. Such types of secure networks may define a closed virtual private network, an extranet with access restrictions, or a remote dial-in by a user into a corporate network. The policy management tool translates these requirements into a set of IP-sec tunnel configuration that can be readily mapped onto the configuration of firewalls that are used to support the secure network.

For more information, please check our paper on Simplifying Network Management in Networks using Policies.

Content Distribution Networks

Policies can be applied to content distribution networks. They can be used to determine which type of content should be cached at different points within the networ, and can also be used to determine the optimal trade-off point between serving content from a backend web-server, or from a set of caching proxies distributed throughout the network.

For more information, please refer to our paper on using policies for content distribution.

Other Disciplines

Policies are also applicable to other areas such as access control management, distributed computing environemnts, caching proxies, storage area networks, operating systems and many other disciplines.