On the use of peer-to-peer architectures for the management of highly dynamic environments

Scalable distributed management is a key challenge for current Internet services and necessary for future ubiquitous services of wireless mobile users. Policy-based Management (PBM) is seen as a practical solution for dealing with the needs of new advanced services for highly dynamic wireless environments. The IETF developed a two-tier client/server PBM framework, yet it requires some important extensions in such environments. In this paper we look into new management mechanisms for dealing with these limitations by proposing the Peer-to-Peer Policy Management Infrastructure (P4MI), a PBM framework based on peer-to-peer technology as the main enabling mechanism. We instantiate this abstract framework to Ambient Networks, a new concept aimed at creating network solutions for new mobile and wireless systems. We show that the P4MI is both a scalable and a complete PBM solution for coping with the challenges of Ambient Networks.