IETF to work on policy-based networking

By Sandra Gittlen
Network World Fusion, 8/25/98

Chicago - Network managers looking to include details of traffic delivery in their service-level agreements (SLA) with ISPs are in for some good news.

Attendees of the Internet Engineering Task Force meeting here yesterday approved the creation of a working group to develop standards for policy-based networking.

The working group, which still needs the approval of the Internet Engineering Steering Group to be created, would create schemas by which various devices in a network could recognize policies set up by network administrators.

"[Policies] will provide the translation from business-speak to device-level speak," said Ed Ellesson, senior engineer at IBM Networking Software in Research Triangle Park, N.C. "The policy will tell the device what needs to be done [with packets]."

For instance, if a company wants to include in its SLA that certain traffic, such as video, gets a specific level of service, then the ISP will be able to mark those packets so other devices in the network follow through on that agreed-upon level, according to Ellesson.

Network managers will also be able to specify, using this approach, whether packets using the proposed IP Security protocol should be admitted to the network, he said.

Internally, network administrators could use policies to establish priority for departmental traffic, he said.

Even though many vendors either have or are developing their own plans, the success of policy-based networking depends on interoperability among various vendors' devices, one meeting attendee said.

Ellesson, who is co-chair of the working group, said the group would not be focused on protocols because that work is being done elsewhere in the IETF. Instead, the group will work on a framework and set of data structures that facilitate the administration and distribution of policies, including a means of specifying what actions are to be taken under what conditions.