Addressing some challenges in autonomic monitoring in self-managing networks

Self-monitoring is one of the key expected capabilities of an autonomic system. An autonomic system can be a single network node or the entire network as an entity, having the ability to automatically adjust its behaviour based on the conditions in which the system and its components work. Self-monitoring for the purposes of self-configuration, cooperative event detection by a number of systems in a network, knowledge/information distribution, service-diagnosis and self-protection requires a number of challenges/questions to be addressed. In this paper, we present the concepts behind self-monitoring as a capability of a single node and as a capability of a network that is considered as an entity. We also discuss the challenges and questions to be addressed when designing and deploying self-monitoring mechanisms for a single node and for an entire network and, we present some solutions to these challenges. Because self-monitoring is broad, we limit our focus to self-monitoring applied to inbound/outbound protocol-specific traffic at some point(s). As part of the solution to some challenges we try to address, we introduce the concept of on-demand monitoring (ODM) of protocol-specific traffic.