Actor preference manager (APM)

APM role in NETQOS architecture

APM offers ontology and scenario oriented policy management interfaces for specification and configuration of business level policy requirements according the actor’s expertise.
APM is used by the actors to select appropriate QoS mechanisms and guarantees dynamically, in the NETQOS framework.
APM GUIs are designed to support different kind of policies allowing automated configuration of specific QoS mechanisms dependent on the particular actor.  
APM specifications are transformed in business layer policies and transformed by the NETQOS system into intermediate and operational policies.

APM component consists of:

• GUIs  (Graphical User Interfaces)  for QoS policy management for different actors and policy management scenarios;
• Ontology oriented interfaces and policy consistency check;
• Policy processing considering actor and SLA dependencies.

APM interactions

At the business level, QoS policies are entered in the NETQOS system using APM scenario and actor oriented Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) for QoS policy management.
The design of the particular GUI and QoS policy specifications depend on the role, knowledge and expertise of the actors (ISP operator, end-user, customer).
Business level QoS policy content related to the specific business models, scenarios and particular ontology of the different actors is checked for consistency by the APM component.
Using the POLD component, the business QoS policy specifications are translated into unified intermediate QoS policy presentations, stored in the policy repository.



The automated provisioning of the policies of the different actors is based on translation of intermediate policy descriptions into operational policies and configuration of the operational policies at the managed entities by the corresponding Agents. Using the policy repository, the system components are able to interact and provide efficiently the automated policy provisioning for the different actors, which includes tasks for dependency analysis, translation, decision, adaptation, monitoring and configuration of policies.

Policy management interface for dynamic QoS selection by user (customer)

Using the NETQOS actor oriented policy management interface (APM GUIs for users), the end user can define policies for QoS guarantees in heterogeneous Internet environments for specific QoS management scenarios.
For instance, the user can specify QoS preferences for bandwidth allocation, transport service composition and QoS measurements, which are translated by the system in business, intermediate and operational QoS policies and configured for automated provisioning.
The example QoS policy management interface allows the dynamically specification of end user’s preferences for the quality of communication applications (VoIP, Mobile TV, file downloads, multimedia streaming, etc) and the network delivery context. The interface supports the automated configuration of router’s QoS mechanisms dependent on the end users requirements. In addition, the end-user is enabled to analyse the dependencies of the QoS policy specifications and optimise the policy parameters considering specific criteria.

The user selects his preferences dynamically, such as “high quality”, “best effort” and suitable network for the delivery of the communication application. The requirements of the end user are mapped into business QoS policy specifications dealing with resource allocation. Each policy is characterized by unique policy identifier, the corresponding SLAs and the actor descriptions.
The ontology oriented GUI implementation of the APA component facilitates the mapping of the specific preferences (parameters) to user’s business level QoS policy rules, as well as their translation and storage as unified intermediate policy in the repository using POLD facilities.
Based on the intermediate policy, the APA component produces the corresponding operational policy. In particular case, the operational policy describes the QoS requirements for the application traffic flow of the end-user.
When the end-user application is launched, the Network Agent is invoked to configure the QoS requirements for the application traffic at the heterogeneous routers, as defined by the operational policy considering the particular source and destination addresses of the user.