Requirements and Quality Attributes

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Necessary Conditions for the success of Active Networks 

The idea of Active Networks can be established, provided that  

Ø     An infrastructure can be developed so as to produce architectural models that can provide a safe, sandboxed programmable platform for execution of SmartPackets.

Ø    There is a need to limit the memory and processing requirements of the SmartPackets to prevent runaway execution or memory hogging since application code is allowed to create its own data structures and implement its own mechanisms.

Ø    Active Nodes should be able to authenticate the sender of the SmartPacket and authorize the access privileges given to the SmartPacket in order to create secure, survivable networks.

Ø  Proper investigation as to how new application services and network protocols can be deployed in the Active Network.  

How the Quality Attribute Requirements are Achieve

Interoperability:   Support interoperation of SmartPackets and Active Nodes.  Since SmartPackets are executable entities, their state has to be preserved when they are transported from one Active Node to the next. Although, the code in the SmartPacket can be in any executable format but it is executed at the node only if the node has the correct processing environment. A separate environment is required for each invocation to prevent undesirable interactions and malicious access to node resources.

Extensibility:  Provide a stable set of network integration and interoperation services needed by most networks, but be extensible for node integration services required to integrate a node to the network using the concept of active networks such that new protocols and new services can  be introduced into the network without the need for network-wide standardization. Applications can customize the network processing and adapt it to the application's immediate requirements.

Reliability: by allowing applications to selectively determine the partitioning of functionality between the end points and intermediaries. 

Scalability: active networks provide low-latency, high scalability reliable and semi-reliable multipoint to multipoint transport as a means of increasing scalability. 

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