Towards a Declarative Framework for Managing Application and Network Adaptations

Cross layer optimizations are increasingly being used in a variety of applications to improve application performance. However most of these implementations are ad hoc and performed on a per application basis. In this paper we propose a declarative framework for managing application and network adaptations. The declarative paradigm provides a much needed clean line of separation between the high level goals and the low level implementations. Our framework exposes the tunable features of both the application and the network across layers of the network stack which can then be jointly optimized. We allow operators to control the adaptation process through operator specified policies. This enables operators to retain control over their networks while the application and the network adapt in response to changing conditions. To support evolution, we pursue an ontological approach and use semantic web languages such as OWL and RDF in our framework for the policy and declarative specifications, thereby also leveraging the inherent reasoning and conflict resolution features of these languages. We then describe our framework developed on top of NS2 to demonstrate the utility of our approach in the easy implementation of cross layer optimizations through sample application scenarios.