A distributed network management systems for user-controlled lightpath provisioning and its security requirements

Abstract

There is a growing trend for many large enterprises and other users to acquire their own optical networks. These customer-owned and managed networks bring cost saving benefits as well as management challenges, especially in the security aspect. In this thesis, a distributed network management system based on Service Oriented Architectures for customer-owned optical networks is presented. The system realizes User-Controlled Lightpath Provisioning and provides users the ability to make end-to-end connections across multiple administrative domains. However, the current version of the system does not meet the security requirements of UCLP. This thesis also presents the research work on how to overcome the security challenge in customer-owned optical network management. The security requirements of the system are analyzed and the major difficulties are identified. Different access control models and security technologies are investigated. An access control mechanism based on Attribute Certificate is chosen for the future implementation of the UCLP system.