An architecture for automatic configuration of integrated networks

Configuration and management activities are frequently performed both in local area and campus networks due to the intrinsic variability characterizing such networks and the innovative services provided through them. Indeed, in order to benefit from services like voice over IP and multimedia content distribution, corporate users need to configure and manage their network appropriately. Suitable strategies have to be undertaken to fulfill stringent requirements imposed by such services on the underlying "integrated" transport infrastructure. These activities are both time and money consuming since they are usually under the responsibility of network administrators and managers. We present an architecture that allows the configuration of network devices in an automatic fashion in order to facilitate traffic management and prioritization in LANs. On one hand, traffic management is optimized through the segmentation of a corporate network into multiple virtual LANs via SNMP. On the other, traffic prioritization is carried out by grouping LAN packets into separate classes associated with different priority levels in compliance with 802.1p. The segmentation process is carried out in two steps: in the first, the network segmentation into "multimedia hosts" (i.e., IP phone and multimedia PC) and "data hosts" is accomplished (as well as traffic prioritization); in the second, the segmentation task is optimized in both VLANs thanks to the utilization of a "partitioning algorithm".