Abstract: The “what” and “how” of policy-based management is integrated in a single framework that enables a system administrator to specify service-level quality of service (QoS) goals for automatic enforcement. Automatic enforcement of the specified “high-level” QoS goals is realized through the execution of “low-level” rule-based or procedural logic, without the client having to specify the low level logic. Specifically, one embodiment of the invention employs a management server including a graphical interface that allows a user, e.g. a system administrator, to easily specify parameters for service-level QoS goals. A QoS goal is defined by the administrator selecting a client, a service and a QoS expression that specifies the desired service-level QoS. The state of the network is monitored and one or more defined QoS goals are selected for evaluation in a continuous process. The QoS delivered for the selected goal is determined and compared to the desired QoS for the selected QoS goal.

Abstract: A policy-based network management system is realized by enabling policy-based management programs to be defined via run-time loading of “policy packages” that are collections of reusable “policy components”. Such reusable policy components may be written by the vendor of the policy-based management system, or by system-administrators, who are the users of policy-based management systems or even by third-party people, who may be experts in the management of specific application domains such as vendors of network devices. In the latter case, these policy components can be assembled into a functionally complete policy package by system administrators. Alternatively, the system administrators can also load a pre-assembled policy package into a management server and only have to specify the desired service level goals.