Using an adaptive management plane for policy-based network management traffic in MANETs

Network management for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) is a challenging management problem given the intermittent connectivity of the nodes and the low bandwidth constraints associated with these networks. Further, MANET management mandates a distributed management paradigm, which gives rise to specific information dissemination challenges. In order to manage these networks, the Network Management System (NMS) needs to send critical network management alerts and data to network operation centers (NOCs) and the NOCs need to send changes to policies and configuration files to the distributed nodes. The need to keep the overhead of management traffic to a minimum and yet reliably deliver this data is a requirement for any NMS in this environment. This paper examines these challenges and proposes an Adaptive Management Plane approach that overcomes these challenges. This approach provides support for Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN), allowing messages to reach intermittently connected nodes. It also provides a service to deliver management data to the remote nodes according to the information dissemination requirements that regulate the expiration, revision and confirmation of the data. In addition, the approach provides support for above Multi-Topology Routing (MTR), allowing the NMS to deliver data of different priorities over multiple networks that exhibit different traffic delivery characteristics. This solution is described in terms of an implementation in the Dynamic Re-Addressing and Management for the Army (DRAMA) policy-based network management system.