Supporting traditional IP applications in active networks

The introduction of a new service and protocol occurs very slowly in current network infrastructures. To solve this problem, the active network was proposed by DARPA. Active network researches have resulted in many productions, but up until now active networks could not support traditional network applications. This paper introduces a typical active network architecture and a node OS interface specification and explains ASP EE. Based on an idea by Abone, this paper designs an active network infrastructure to support traditional IP applications and implements a prototype. The authors implement a priority queue running in the prototype. The authors then construct an experimental network based on the prototype and carry out some measurements. The experiments demonstrate that this prototype could make an active network supporting traditional IP network applications, and it may provide some network user customized services.