Recently, a number of new research initiatives, most notably UCLPv2 and GENI, have promoted the dynamic partition of physical network resources as the means to (a) operate the network and (b) to implement new protocols and services. This leads to a number of open issues such as resource discovery, implementation of resource partitioning, and the aggregation of resources to create arbitrary network topologies. To us, the key issue is the design of a mechanism to trade, acquire, and control the network resources, given a choice of resource providers. In this paper, we present an architecture that allows physical resources to be traded, while granting users controlled access to the acquired resources via a policy enforcement mechanism. In addition, it allows provider domains to be linked via configurable resource exchange points that are the physical layer equivalents of the pooling point, or Internet Exchange Point (IXP).

We demonstrate how our trading system will operate by presenting a use case where a network topology is constructed using resources from multiple providers. The use case also shows how a dynamic reconfiguration can be effected by the customer though the use of simple access control policies, without involving the provider.