On the Performance of COPS-PR and NETCONF in an Integrated Management Environment for DiffServ-enabled Networks

Although COPS-PR is a policy management protocol already found in commercial network equipments, the IETF has been also working on the standardization of the NETCONF protocol, which can be seen as a competing solution when employed for QoS management. NETCONF seems to have the potential to become a feasible alternative to the established management protocols (e.g., SNMP), but few is known about its behavior and performance when it is used together with COPS-PR. In this paper we present and evaluation of NETCONF and COPS-PR in a management environment for DiffServ-enabled networks. NETCONF to COPS-PR gateways have been developed in order to integrated COPS-PR commercial equipments into networks managed via NETCONF-capable management stations. Through such gateways a set of evaluations have been performed in order to draw the picture of integrated NETCONF and COPS-PR for QoS management. The results presented in this paper can help network operators in selecting adequate management setups, as well as provide guidelines for the improvement of NETCONF.