CAREER: Towards Automated and Assurable Enterprise Network Migration

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

Enterprise network operators must frequently change the design of their networks to reflect new organizational needs (e.g., company mergers). Redesigning enterprise networks is challenging given the need to change hundreds of interdependent low-level configurations. Configuration errors can have catastrophic consequences (e.g., large-scale network outages). The project is investigating systematic frameworks to help operators redesign their networks to meet desired high-level objectives. Optimization problems are formulated that trade-off the benefits of a redesign task with the reconfiguration costs involved. Algorithms for the redesign tasks are derived by exploring synergies with theoretical work in the operations research community. The project is devising hybrid methodologies for validating configuration changes that combine static configuration analysis with information obtained from monitoring network behavior. Novel techniques based on data-mining are being developed that can capture configuration dependencies across network devices. The techniques are being applied to important and unexplored problem domains such as migrating security policies from enterprise data centers to a cloud computing model, reorganizing routing designs on mergers, and service differentiation policies. The research if successful will change how operators manage their networks, leading to large cost-savings for IT organizations, and the creation of more reliable and secure networks. The research will foster innovation by lowering the risks in migration to new enterprise network architectures such as cloud computing and clean-slate architectures. The PI is creating a network configuration data repository available to academic researchers, introducing new lecture material on enterprise management in the networking curriculum, and participating in summer camps for K-12 students.