Web-based Customer Management of VPNs.pdfVIP

Journal of Network and Systems Management, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2001 1064-7570/ 01/ 0300-0067$19.50/ 0 ? 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation 67 Web-Based Customer Management of VPNs Raouf Boutaba,1 Walfrey Ng,2 and Alberto Leon-Garcia3 The use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) is one of the major trends in the integrated broadband communications environment. Currently, the control and management of VPN resources is mainly supported by the provider of the bearer telecommunication services, and VPN customers have no control over these resources. The increasing importance of the broadband communication infrastructure in corporate operations and transactions is stressing the requirement for a customizable configuration, operation and management of VPN services. First, this paper discusses the evolution of VPN environments towards customized VPN configurations and goal-driven management of these VPNs. VPN service characteristics and management requirements are analyzed. Then, the paper introduces the proposed customer management architecture satisfying these requirements. The architecture is based on the multi-level virtualization of network resources through the partitioning of resources in the provider’s shared communication infrastructure and the dynamic allocation of these resources to customers. A Web-based distributed approach is used for implementing the proposed customer management of VPNs. KEY WORDS: VPN; resource partitioning; customer management; Web-based management. 1. INTRODUCTION A Virtual Private Network (VPN) aims at offering a flexible and cost-effective transport service to a multi-site customer. As opposed to leased-lines-based pri- vate networks, the VPN service allows for a more efficient and flexible use of the common public network infrastructure so that communication resources can be easily adjusted according to the changing traffic requirements of customers. 1 Department of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada. E