What are components of autonomic networking?

The concept of the autonomic systems has been derived from a biological entity called the autonomic nervous system (ANS). In human body this system is responsible for carrying out functions such as blood pressure and circulation, respiration and emotive response. 

In this article we discuss about the various components of the autonomic networking.

Components of Autonomic Networking

Autognostics: 

- This category of autonomic components includes capabilities such as that of awareness, self – discovery and self – analysis. 

- With all these capabilities, an autonomic system is capable of having a high – level view. 

- In other words, we can say that perceptual sub–systems are represented by it which serves the purpose of gathering, analyzing and reporting on the conditions and states of the system. 

- These components provide a basis to the system for responding and validating its decisions. 

- In simple words, autognostics provide self – knowledge. 

- This component if is rich, might provide various perceptual senses. 

-In autonomic systems, models of both the external and internal environments are embedded through which perceived threats and states can be assigned some relative value. 

- When it comes to autonomic networking, inputs from the following are taken for defining the state of the network:

a) Various network elements such as network interfaces and switches (inclusive of the current state and specification and configuration.

b) End – host

c)  Traffic flows

d) Logical diagrams

e) Design specifications

f)   Application performance data

- This component inter operates with the other components of the autonomic system.

Configuration management: 

- The responsibility for the interactions that take place among the interfaces and the elements.

- It consists of an accounting capability with which it is possible to track the configurations over the time under various circumstances. 

- Metaphorically, they act as the memory for the autonomic systems. 

- Provision and the remediation over a network can be applied through the configuration settings.

- In addition to these, two other things which can be applied are the selective performance and the implementation affecting access.

- This category only contains the actions that are taken by the human engineers. 

- There are a very few exceptional cases where the interface settings are configured manually using the automated scripts. 

- The dynamic population of the devices is maintained implicitly.

- This component must have the capability operating on all devices and to recover the old configuration settings. 

- There can be some situations where the states may become unrecoverable. 

- Therefore, the sub – system must be capable of assessing the consequence of the changes before they are issued.

Policy management: 

- This component is inclusive of the following:

a)   Policy specification

b)   Deployment

c)   Reasoning over the policies

d)   Update of policies

e)   Maintenance of the policies

f)    Enforcement

- The reasons for including this component are:

a)  Configuration management

b)  Definition of the roles and relationships

c)  Establishment of trust and reputation

d)  Description of business processes

e)  Definition of performance

f) Constraints on behavior issues such as privacy, resource access, collaboration and security.

- It represents a model of ideal behavior and environment representing effective interaction.

- For defining the constituents of a policy it is important to know what all is involved in its management.

Autodefense: 

- The mechanism presented by this component is both dynamic and adaptive in nature.

- This mechanism has been developed to keep the network infrastructure safe from the malicious attacks. 

- Further, it also prevents the illegal use of the infrastructure for attacking the various technological resources. 

- This component has the capability of striking a balance between the various performance objectives that have threat management actions. 

- This component can be compared to the immune system of the human body.

Security: 

The structure provided by the security component is responsible for defining and enforcing the relationships between the following:

a)   Roles

b)   Content

c)   resources