Understanding Policy-Based Networking

Book excerpt: Get the big picture on policy networking with this guide from one of the leaders of policy-based standards efforts With the advent of policy servers, network administrators no longer have to create data traffic rules (policy) by hand. This book will sort out the hype from the reality for this important advance in networking. The authors provide examples and case studies as well as product roadmaps and suggestions for possible migration paths from the old labor-intensive management to next-generation PBNs (policy-based networks). Readers will learn more about the first network services set up for policy-based management including Quality of Service (QoS), the Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) in Win2000, the LDAP directory technology, and other services nearing standards completion.