Self-managed Cells for Ubiquitous Systems - Computer Network Security - page 1

Self-managed Cells for Ubiquitous Systems
Naranker Dulay 1 , Emil Lupu 1 , Morris Sloman 1 ,
Joe Sventek 2 , Nagwa Badr 2 , and Stephen Heeps 2
1 Department of Computing, Imperial College London,
180 Queen's Gate, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
{n.dulay, e.c.lupu, m.sloman}@imperial.ac.uk
2 Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow,
17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, United Kingdom
{joe, nagwa, heeps}@dcs.gla.ac.uk
Abstract. Amongst the challenges of ubiquitous computing is the need to pro-
vide management support for personal wireless devices and sensors. In this ex-
tended abstract we introduce a policy-based architecture that supports manage-
ment at varying levels based on the concept of a self-managed cell. Cells in-
clude policy-driven agents that support context-based and trust-based access
control and system adaptation. Cells can also organize themselves through fed-
eration and nesting.
1 Introduction
Advances in ubiquitous computing infrastructures have the potential to dramatically
broaden the role of computing in the everyday lives of people with a greater prolifera-
tion of personal wireless devices, and more significantly with wireless computing
devices starting to be embedded in the environment: in buildings, in roads, in vehi-
cles, in the landscape, in home appliances, in clothing, on packaging of consumer
goods in shops; even as implants in plants, animals and humans. The challenges of
ubiquitous computing will not only be about building such ubiquitous environments,
they will also be about managing the resources and omnipresent information which
ubiquitous systems will need to discover, capture, process and publish behind the
scenes. This information will be ephemeral, mobile, fragmented and voluminous with
no predictable flows between producers or users of the information.
1.1 Ubiquitous Systems Management
Existing architectures for network and systems management are aimed at large-scale
corporate environments, telecommunications networks and Internet service providers
and do not cater for ubiquitous environments, although specific techniques for moni-
toring, event correlation, service discovery, quality of service and policy-based man-
agement can be used to some degree. For ubiquitous systems, architectures are needed
that can scale down to small devices with local decision-making. The limitations of
small devices, e.g. memory size, CPU speed, battery life, screen size, network range
and changing connectivity; require new techniques for optimizing resource usage and
tailoring information within tight deadlines. Management will also need to be per-