On using policies for managing service provisioning in agent-based heterogenous environments for mobile users

Today´s Internet domains are controlled more and more by policies. Each domain is composed of several access networks with their capabilities, devices, users and a specific behavior defined by policies. These policies control service provisioning, and automate network resource configuration. However, the growth in the mobility nature of users, the difference between the service requested by the user and the one offered by the access network, the heterogeneity of access networks and service parameters lead to the problem of adapting the service to the user and access network´s behavior. We present in this paper an approach that combines agents, policies, and profiles. The agents gather relevant information in order to build up profiles helping adapt the requested service, and the policies control both the behavior of the devices and the agents in the system. Policies defined by the administrator are static and can´t deal with all events occurring in the domain. New policies are then generated automatically when the corresponding service is agreed on by the network and the user after a negotiation process, when new tasks are defined, or when changing the behavior of the agents in the system. The key point is to tailor the service and policies according to the users preferences, the network capabilities and in the limit of the existing services with a limited delay and overhead in the network traffic to achieve a good scalability.