Using an Identity Plane for Adapting Network Behavior to User and Service Requirements

The advent of Software Defined Networking (SDN) has opened the door to new network functions that were difficult or even impossible to have. This has been the case of typically complex network management operations, which now can be layered on top of SDN controllers in order to adapt network behavior to achieve some objectives or quickly react to network events so network consistence is unaltered by them. However, users and services have little to say in current SDN architectures. In this paper we discuss how to use an Identity Plane to carry user and service identities and requirements to network controllers, which would contact a management service that follows the management model proposed by Autonomic Computing (AC) to know the necessary changes to adapt the network behavior to such requirements.