Future Internet is based on the concepts of autonomicity and cognition, where each network element is able to monitor its surrounding environment, evaluate the situation, and decide the action that should be applied. In such context, the traditional service provisioning approaches necessitate a paradigm shift so as to incorporate the Cognitive Cycle. Towards this end, in this chapter, we introduce a Cognitive Service Provision framework suitable for Future Internet Networks. The proposed approach supports cognition by modeling a service as an aggregation of software components bundled together through a graph. Consequently, each service is composed by various components and is tailored to the operational context of the requestor. In order to prove the viability and applicability of the proposed approach we also introduce the enhancement of the IP Multimedia Subsystem through our Cognitive Service Provision framework. Finally, based on our work, we discuss future research directions and the link between service and network management.
TopFuture Internet Networks
Future network systems design principles are based on high autonomy of network elements in order to allow distributed management, fast decisions, and continuous local optimization. The Cognitive Cycle model, as it is depicted in Figure 1, is envisaged to be in the heart of Future Internet Elements and it leads to their autonomy (Kousaridas et al., 2010), (Ganek, 2003). A Future Internet Element could be a network element (e.g., base station, mobile device), a network manager, or any software element that lies at the service layer.
Figure 1. Generic cognitive cycle model
The three distinct phases of the Generic Cognitive Cycle Model are the following:
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Monitoring process involves gathering of information about the environment and the internal state of a Future Internet Element. Moreover, the Monitoring process receives, internally or externally, feedback about the effectiveness of an execution that took place, after the last decision.
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Decision Making process includes the problem solving techniques for reconfiguration and adaptation, utilizing the developed knowledge model and situation awareness. The Decision Making supports the optimal configuration of each element, considering its hypostasis and the organization level that it belongs. Decision making mechanism identifies alternatives for adaptation or optimization and chooses the best one, based on situation assessment, understanding of the surrounding context, and the preferences of the element. After decision making, the execution process undertakes to apply the decision that will change the behavior of the element.
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Execution process involves (self-) reconfiguration, software-component replacement or re-organization and optimization actions.
The scope of this book chapter is to discuss the challenges and describe the path for the evolution of the Future Internet services synthesis, delivery and adaptation, by exploiting the cognitive cycle paradigm. The cognitive cycle is placed at each network element that provides, consumes, or forwards one or more end-user services, and thus affects their performance and consequently users’ experience. Even the software that undertakes to deliver (i.e. service provider) or consume (i.e. user application) the respective end-user service (Service Layer) is designed following the cognitive cycle model and consequently interacts with the other cognitive cycles, thus affecting its behavior.
The continuous increase of the number of user equipments, in combination with the evolution of the traditional client/server model (Houssos, Gazis, & Alonistioti, 2003)0, for service provision towards more distributed application structures have paved the way for more advanced services. Especially, by taking into account that even simple users through their own devices (e.g., smart phones) can concurrently have the role of service consumer and service provider.
The rest of this chapter is organized as follows: In the following section the service management background is investigated, by presenting key research outcomes for service delivery, service publish and service discovery. Thereinafter, a platform independent and system agnostic framework for the evolution of the Future Internet service management is described, by adopting the cognitive cycle paradigm. In section 4, the baseline 3GPP IP multimedia sub-System (IMS) architecture is studied and its extensions in order to support the cognitive service provision framework are proposed. Finally, we conclude with future research directions and especially we discuss the cooperation between the service and network management, which is a major challenge that lies ahead.
TopService Management Background
In the context of this section we will elaborate on the presentation of some key concepts of the service management area. We commence by providing a number of definitions which set the methodological and theoretical foundations of our work and proceed by identifying the state-of-the art paradigms of the area.