Network Measurement Policy System; A Novel Policy System for Integrated Network Measurement

This paper proposes network measurement policy system (NMPS), which integrates various network measurement tools by the policy technology. NMPS does not aim at one particular measurement operation, and NMPS separates the control of measurement operation from the measurement operation itself. NMPS provides a scheduling and controlling mechanism, which is independent of network measurement tools and applications. Additionally, two key technologies of NMPS, general ruleset language (GRL) and measurement information modeling (MsmtIM), are proposed and discussed in this paper. As a simple and practical policy definition language in NMPS, GRL defines a network measurement policy as a set of ECA(event-condition-action)-based scheduling rules. MsmtIM is a metadata-based description method of measurement information. In MsmtIM, the concepts and elements of the measured object, metric, measurement operation, measurement result, measurement information item and measurement information base are defined and described formally. MsmtIM integrates data from varieties of measurement tools, of which local syntax is different. MsmtIM can describe each interface between NMPS and various measurement tools in a unified form.