Policy Agent

The policy agent is a component within server platforms for enforcing policy decisions regarding network resources. The architecture of the policy enforcement points in a server is illustrated in the Figure below:

The kernel stack in a server implements the marking and policing functions associated with the integrated services/differentiated services support. These functions are configured by the policy agent. The policy agent may read the policy information from a LDAP based policy repository or from a local configuration file. Legacy applications can be provided premium services by means of policies stored at the repository. The agent exports an interface which would allow policy-aware applications to request premium services as well.

The first policy-aware application that we have implemented is the RSVP agent. The RSVP agent uses the policy agent to provide an upper bound on the number of reserved connections at a server. It communicates to the applications using the industry standard RSVP API (RAPI).

The Policy Agent is available on the IBM S/390, AIX, and Linux platforms.