Toward a flexible ontology-based policy approach for network operations using the KAoS framework

This paper addresses the challenges of flexible and uniform policy management in complex military network operations. The ontology-based approach of KAoS policy services provides flexibility in level of abstraction, in mapping to third-party policy approaches, and in managing policies across multiple application domains and across different operating environments. KAoS allows for specification of policy in contrained English with an ontology-based vocabulary. Following an overview of the major components of the KAoS Policy Services framework, we describe ontology-related components, including the UCore and KAoS ontologies. We then describe our work on network and cognitive radio management. We present our approach to mapping SNMP MIB information to ontologies. Finally, we discuss results of an ongoing performance study of the policy system.