Evolution in Action: Using Active Networking to Evolve Network Support for Mobility

TitleEvolution in Action: Using Active Networking to Evolve Network Support for Mobility
Publication TypeBook Chapters
Year of Publication2002
AuthorsSeong-Kyu S, Shannon S, Hicks MW, Nettles S
EditorSterbenz J, Takada O, Tschudin C, Plattner B
Book TitleActive NetworksActive Networks
Series TitleLecture Notes in Computer Science
Volume2546
Pagination146 - 161
PublisherSpringer Berlin / Heidelberg
ISBN Number978-3-540-00223-9
Abstract

A key early objective of Active Networking (AN) was to support on-the-fly network evolution. Although AN has been used relatively extensively to build application-customized protocols and even whole networking systems, demonstrations of evolution have been limited. This paper examines three AN mechanisms and how they enable evolution: active packets and plug-in extensions, well-known to the AN community, and update extensions, which are novel to AN. We devote our presentation to a series of demonstrations of how each type of evolution can be applied to the problem of adding support for mobility to a network. This represents the most large-scale demonstration of AN evolution to date. These demonstrations show what previous AN research has not: that AN technology can, in fact, support very significant changes to the network, even while the network is operational.

URLhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36199-5_12