Service creation and management in active telecom networks
Marcus Brunner, Bernhard Plattner, Rolf Stadler · Communications of the ACM · 2001
Introduction Recent research in the area of active networking has demonstrated the potential of this new technology. From the service point of view, active networking allows customized packet processing inside the network, on a per-packet, per-flow, or per-service basis. Customized packet processing can be applied, e.g., to application-aware routing, information caching, multi-party communications, and packet filtering [1]. From the management perspective, active networking technology facilitates rapid service deployment and flexible service management [2]. The paradigm of active networking allows a party to install and run a service on a network in a similar way as a program can be installed and executed on a computer. In this analogy, the network plays the role of the computer, which is simultaneously shared among many parties (i.e., customers) and which is owned and operated by the network provider. While suggesting attractive benefits, active networking also poses seriou