Operating System Support for Active Networks

Active Networks provide a network infrastructure which can be programmed on a per-user or even a per-packet basis. While the flexibility of such systems is seductive, the safety and security risks are greatly increased. Active network nodes must provide programmability while respecting policy constraints of the network provider and protecting nodes and other users from faulty applications. In addition, many modern applications demand Quality of Service guarantees which will require exposing selected portions of the node resource management policy. As shared infrastructure, reliability beyond that of general purpose computing systems is required. EROS (the Extremely Reliable Operating System) is an attractive candidate for resource management in an Active Network node. EROS is a pure capability system which provides complete accountability for persistent, consumable and multiplexed resources. We have implemented a prototype Active Network element on the EROS platform which provides the ..