Nortel Networks IBM IBM Nortel Networks Microsoft This document articulates the requirements and basic components of a policy-based management architecture. It focuses on the storage and retrieval of policy rules from a directory-based repository, for use in the management of network devices. The architecture is described in terms of its functional components and operational characteristics. It is intended to be device and vendor independent, interoperable and scalable. There are three basic sections of this draft, addressing: o the motivation for policy-based management that briefly describes the requirements for a policy framework architecture; o a reference model that defines a first-level functional decomposition and captures the key concepts in defining policy tools, policy rules, the use of a repository and schema, and the mechanisms underlying the definition, storage and retrieval of policies; and o an architecture that describes each of the functional components, and includes a narrative about how the architecture will execute.