Autonomic renumbering in the future iInternet

IPv6 is an essential building block of the evolution toward the future Internet. To take the full benefit of this protocol and exploit all its features, the future Internet needs to gracefully couple it with autonomics. In this article we demonstrate through our experience with network renumbering how the coupling of both IPv6 core functionality extended with major functions of the autonomic world can lead to fully autonomous activities of main management functions. We instantiate the notions of self-configuration, self-monitoring, self-protection, and self-healing in the network renumbering process and show how all together they can make renumbering a real success. We illustrate the various functions with the tools we have implemented to support them.