Automatic Address Scheduling and Management for Broadband IP Networks

Abstract

The increase in number, diversity, and complexity of modern network devices and services creates unprecedented challenges for the currently prevailing approach of manual IP address management. Manually maintaining IP addresses could always be sub-optimal for IP resource utilization. Besides, it requires heavy human effort from network operators. To achieve high utilization and flexible scheduling of IP network addresses, it is necessary to automate the address scheduling process in the Internet of the future. Based on analysis of the gap between existing address management methods and emerging requirements of the IP network, this chapter illustrates CASM, a new approach for IP address scheduling, including its background, use cases, requirements, general framework, system architecture, interface, and workflow. A prototype system is developed and evaluated based on data from real-world networks and users in two Chinese provinces. Experimental results demonstrate that our system can largely improve the address utilization efficiency and reduce the workload of network resource maintenance.