Inter-domain Integrity Management for Programmable Network Interfaces

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Rapid development of the programmable network concepts anticipates a new telecommunications environment where the third party service providers will develop sophisticated user-customised multimedia applications and deploy them through the direct access to the network operators’ control plane and the network itself. This is a radical change of direction, since currently operators are developing and testing the new services themselves, thus being confident of the correct and proper functioning and performance of the services, support systems and the underlying networks. This future scenario raises the issue of integrity between the network operator and the third party (service provider) domain. Here we discuss the current developments in the area of programmable networks, focusing on the open APIs such as Parlay, and present a top-down methodology for the integrity analysis and the development of integrity policies. Integrity policies give rise to the definition of integrity recommendations to be followed by network operators and service providers, or the definition of testing regimes between the two, and are ultimately enforced by the integrity-preserving mechanisms to be implemented by both parties. Moreover, the reference architecture depicting the approach for deploying the integrity mechanisms and support functionality is given.Key wordsProgrammable networksParlay APImultimedia servicesintegrity methodologyintegrity policies.