Policy Based Management for Internet Communities

• Venue: POLICY '04 Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Workshop on Policies for Distributed Systems and Networks
• Year: 2004

Policy Based Management (PBM) is a research topicthat has been driven by the tremendous complexityinherent in the administration and management ofpresent-day networking and telecommunications systemsand services. The increasingly diverse organisationalforms of modern industry represent a significantcomponent of this complexity. Internet communities offerextreme examples of organisational diversity, since theyoften lack any central authority and many subsectionsoperate with almost complete autonomy. This paperargues that PBM systems offer great potential in thisdomain due to the complexity of managementarrangements. However, since these communities lackany single trusted administrative hierarchy, a centralisedsolution to policy engineering and management is notpossible. This paper proposes an approach to modellingcommunities for PBM systems. This approach focuses onthe concept of communities within a hierarchy ofauthority as the fundamental unit of organisationalanalysis. As such, the model reflects the distribution ofauthority in the real-world community, the resultingpolicies reflect the community's operational needs andcontracts between the various groups and individualsthat make up the community. Policy conflicts are used toidentify organisational conflicts that must be resolved. Inorder to illustrate and validate these concepts, the paperpresents a conceptual architecture and case study basedon the secure management of an open publishingnetwork.