An application-oriented cross-domain resource management schema using CORBA

Outlines a framework for the application-oriented management of network resources, suggesting exchange of appropriate application management information between management nodes in different domains, in order to better assist the application´s task. When the application requirements cannot be satisfied within the local environment, management information is passed to the closest available resource of the same type. In our proposed approach, resources are represented as resource virtual machines which exhibit similar characteristics, change their state and perform operations with respect to the availability of the resource, the user or task priority, and/or the user requirements. Attempting to balance the functionality overhead and the real-time constraints of decision making as to the appropriate resource to satisfy a request, the resource virtual machines encapsulate the decision concerning the ability of the resource to satisfy specific requests. The suggested model is based on distributed computing principles and proposes a hierarchical structure of specialized entities (inspectors) to assist information exchange among a variety of nodes or subnetworks. Finally, `resource inspectors´ of the same type (controlling the same type of resource) constitute a logical communication backbone. We present the model´s architecture, as well as a prototype implementation using the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)