[CAnet - news] Management challenges of future campus networks

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 [Internet 2 has recently published a paper outlining objectives of a
workshop on " Manageability Issues In Future Academic Networking".  It is an
excellent discussion document of the challenges facing campus and enterprise
networks in this new age of multiple connected networks, "personal lambdas",
enhanced security and so forth.  This paper I think is a first step in
recognizing that network engineers are moving away from a world of "one size
fits all" network design to becoming "orchestration" engineers who will be
facilitating a variety of network and IT solutions for their user community.
A good example of this approach, to my mind, is the UBC individualized
portal program and the " transmogrifier" which allows users and departments
do their own VLAN configuration.
http://www.educause.edu/Browse/705&ITEM_ID=213  UBC is also at the vanguard
of managing and supporting a number of direct connected lambda initiatives
to individual departments and users-- BSA] 


http://security.internet2.edu/docs/Internet2_Reconnections_Workshop.pdf


Reconnections: Managing Academic Networks With New Requirements
7-September-2005
Manageability Issues In Future Academic Networking

I. PROJECT SUMMARY

The original design principles for the Internet are not fully aligned with
the requirements that are being shaped by the new uses, users, and
technologies of the network. Some early clean-slate thinking efforts have
started to consider a new set of design goals. At the same time, in the
academic networking community, there is growing concern over the increasing
unmanageability of its environment, and the need to realign fundamental
architectural principles for campus and interrealm networks in order to
effectively manage and utilize what is being deployed.

This document describes a workshop, and subsequent activities, that will
convene leading practitioners of academic networking (complex, advanced
campus and enterprise networks with multiple, technically diverse
external connections), along with a few related interests (e.g. network
researchers, vendors, corporate network architects) to focus on the
architectural and management requirements for future R&E networking. By
providing an academic enterprise perspective, this work is intended to
inform and be informed by other efforts on beginning a redesign and
redeployment of internets.

II. PROJECT DESCRIPTION
A. Background


A number of network professionals have observed that there is an increasing
disconnect between traditional Internet design assumptions and evolving user
and operator requirements. Some of these conclusions represent the
articulate and deep understandings of the design and development community
(e.g. see Ref1), identifying grand challenges that illustrate how fragile
some of our most cherished architectural foundations may be. First
efforts at "clean-slate" thinking has already been commissioned to begin a
process of redesign of the general Internet.

At the same time, there is increasing doubt within the "commingled universe"
of R&E networking about the longterm viability of our current approaches.
This academic environment is characterized by complex and advanced
campus networks connected to a growing diversity of external connections,
including both commodity Internet and new services such as Abilene and
dedicated (aka "personal") lambdas. The introduction of additional,
potentially disruptive approaches from clean-slate and other initiatives
could present even greater difficulties for academic enterprises. First
thoughts are now emerging from the deployment community, highlighting the
inadequacy of marketplace responses to ever-increasing system complexity
(see Ref2), and the operational consequences of ad hoc and incremental
approaches to security and regulatory requirements (see Ref3).

The enterprise R&E network is evolving its focus from technologies to
include management of technologies. New metrics such as mean time to
diagnose have entered the vocabulary, representing that the stress points
have moved from meeting the initial demands of the research community to
maintaining the resulting mix of deployed technologies. The introduction of
packet disruption devices, the mesh of firewalls and exceptions, the use of
ubiquitous VLANs and other network trends all have greatly escalated the
complexity, and correspondingly decrease the manageability of campus
networks.

While it may be claimed that the new designs and technologies being explored
will run to isolated machines or subnets in the academic setting, history
has shown that not to be the general case. Connectivity to special
purpose networks is a useful tool and connections of special-purpose hosts
to the campus network has many benefits. As a result, hosts on campus that
might be connected to non-IP off-campus services can pose significant
security and management challenges to the IP regions of the enterprise, or
vice versa.

As traditional backbones are joined by multiple dedicated links, there may
be value in viewing the new academic networking environment as being managed
from the outside in, from the enterprise out into the external network
clouds. It is at the enterprise that the increasing demands and complexity
from the campus and external links need to be integrated and maintained. The
enterprise defines the security environment of its systems; it is the
context in which cost-benefit analysis is done; it will be the locus of
management in the old and new world orders.

The goals of the workshop are not to develop new networking technologies,
but to bring forward the management requirements created by the new
technologies, and new policy requirements, particularly as they are placed
into the existing broth at the enterprise. Conversely, new approaches must
seek to improve manageability, and we intend to identify those requirements
for such planners. We seek to both advise other clean-slate thinking and to
be advised.

B. Workshop and Outputs

The focus of the workshop, and subsequent work that might emerge, is on the
future of architecture and management of campus and national lab networks
that connect to a broad variety of external networks. Manageability is
achieved through art and science applied to a deployed infrastructure built
on strong architectural principles. This workshop intends to identify the
architectural principles that serve to meet the R&E needs while
providing the basis for a manageable infrastructure. It will also identify
much of the science, and some of the art,that must be established to convert
that infrastructure into robust, flexible, and sustainable networks.


A small community within the Internet2 campuses has had a set of planning
calls that have identified a key set of issues that are drivers for workshop
discussion. These issues often are new requirements, some specific to the
R&E community, that must be framed as architectural needs that are mapped
against design for manageability principles. Others are approaches failing
under scale. The issues include:
. Given the increasing need for the academic enterprise to have policy
affect both traffic and routing, what underlying network architecture
principles need to be modified?
. With the diversity of systems (desktops, hi-performance workstations,
instrumentation, telephones, elevator and parking control, soda machines,
etc) now attaching to the network, what architectural principles can guide
crafting of networks with multiple levels of guarantee of service
(reliability, SLA definition and monitoring)?
. How should design reflect the need to provision multiple levels of quality
of service (bandwidth, latency, etc) across a distributed campus network,
with the particular geo-location characteristics of academic research
partnerships?
. With the decentralized decision making structure in academia, how should
network architecture evolve to permit manageability but reduce friction
between the enterprise and the departmental research community in areas such
as security, address space, etc?
. How can the emergence of new technologies, such as trust fabrics, be
leveraged in the design of networks?
. Given the unusual funding models within higher-ed, (e.g. one-time versus
continuing research funds, disparity in local funding bases, uneven legacy
conditions, etc), how should design principles reflect these conditions?
. How must manageability itself, and network management tools, including our
approach to diagnostics,change to meet the new demands for service and
complexity of the environment?
. Has the approach of complexity in the network rather than at the end
station reached its limit in terms ofnetwork and desktop management, and
what can improve the situation?

The planning group will continue to refine the list, and then present a set
of structured discussion items to the attendees prior to the meeting, in
order to prime the pump.
Attendees will be primarily be drawn from a select group of network
architect practitioners from leading edge campuses and national labs. They
will be chosen to reflect the long-range view of the workshop as well as the
need to manage a complex mesh of enterprise and external networks. In
addition, a small group of pertinent vendors (desktops, network equipment,
etc) will be asked to send their chief architectural designers. Finally, we
will augment this group with other clean-slate thinkers to maximize
cross-pollination.

During the workshop we will progress through three successive assessments:
1. Identify parts of our current approaches are failing, or are soon to
fail, in managing enterprise R&E networks and underlying principles that
need to be modified

2. Develop a sense of the requirements for academic networking in the
future, acknowledging drivers in collaboration and science, technology,
policies (including compliance and audit), funding, trust fabrics, external
network trends, and others

3. Translate the requirements and manageability gap analysis into a set of
architectural principles that can guide future design and deployment of
manageable networks to the academic community. Identify specific science
that has to be pursued for manageability needs and processes to develop good
practices.

Deliverables will include the following:
. Two reports from the workshop - Within a month of the workshop, a report
and web site will be developed that contains polished minutes of the
workshop. Two months later, after review and refinement by participants, a
final report will be submitted to NSF and circulated as appropriate. That
report will include recommendations on subsequent steps that NSF and other
agencies could pursue towards the design of better academic networking
environments.
. Strengthening of ties within the future network community - Through the
planning and the workshop itself, we intend to continue discussions that
have already shaped this effort. Beyond the manageability expertise in the
R&E community, there are other community strengths, such as emerging trust
fabrics, that can be shared with other clean-slate efforts.
. Early dissemination to key constituencies - One of the distinctive aspects
of the workshop participants is the ability to elevate the issues to key
campus constituencies, including the campus CIO's, virtual organizations,
and other national and international groups. In that these constituencies
will have to be a significant part of implementing new approaches, it is
important to get their attention and involvement early. The participants in
this workshop have numerous and effective ways to communicate awareness
and outcomes.

[....]


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