76 Software Networks
Autonomic networks are capable of self-configuring to adapt
dynamically to any changes in the environment, of self-optimizing to
ensure their operational efficiency is always optimal, self-repairing to
ensure it is highly reliable, and self-protecting to ensure the security of
the resources and information passing through it.
To perform these different functions, autonomic networks must
have a certain number of attributes:
– self-awareness;
– environment awareness;
– self-monitoring;
– self-adjusting.
To achieve these objectives, we need to change the architecture of
the networks. Thus, autonomic networks offer a new form of
architecture with four planes, where a knowledge plane is added to the
usual three: the data plane, the control plane and the management
plane. The difference with the SDN architecture stems from the
division of the control plane into two sub-planes – the knowledge
plane and the control plane itself. The management plane is also an
additional plane in this architecture, but it is integrated into the
virtualization plane where each software network has its own
management plane.
Figure 3.15 illustrates the new architecture of autonomic networks.
The purpose of the knowledge plane is to collect all of the knowledge
in the network and, for each point in that network, obtain a fairly
universal view. The difference with the SDN architecture, here, is that
the knowledge is centralized at a single point rather than distributed to
each point.
The purpose of the Knowledge Plane is to run the control
algorithms found in the Control Plane, which controls the Data Plane,
which corresponds to the first four layers of the conventional network
architecture. The Management Plane is responsible for the
administration of the other three layers.
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