{"id":159367,"date":"2009-04-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/unraveling-the-complexity-of-network-management\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T21:51:58","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T04:51:58","slug":"unraveling-the-complexity-of-network-management","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/unraveling-the-complexity-of-network-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Unraveling the Complexity of Network Management"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>Operator interviews and anecdotal evidence suggest that<br \/>\nan operator\u2019s ability to manage a network decreases as<br \/>\nthe network becomes more complex. However, there is<br \/>\ncurrently no way to systematically quantify how complex<br \/>\na network\u2019s design is nor how complexity may impact<br \/>\nnetwork management activities. In this paper, we<br \/>\ndevelop a suite of complexity models that describe the<br \/>\nrouting design and configuration of a network in a succinct<br \/>\nfashion, abstracting away details of the underlying<br \/>\nconfiguration languages. Our models, and the complexity<br \/>\nmetrics arising from them, capture the difficulty of<br \/>\nconfiguring control and data plane behaviors on routers.<br \/>\nThey also measure the inherent complexity of the reachability<br \/>\nconstraints that a network implements via its routing<br \/>\ndesign. Our models simplify network design and<br \/>\nmanagement by facilitating comparison between alternative<br \/>\ndesigns for a network. We tested our models<br \/>\non seven networks, including four university networks<br \/>\nand three enterprise networks. We validated the results<br \/>\nthrough interviews with the operators of five of the networks,<br \/>\nand we show that the metrics are predictive of the<br \/>\nissues operators face when reconfiguring their networks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Operator interviews and anecdotal evidence suggest that an operator\u2019s ability to manage a network decreases as the network becomes more complex. However, there is currently no way to systematically quantify how complex a network\u2019s design is nor how complexity may impact network management activities. In this paper, we develop a suite of complexity models that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"dmaltz"}],"msr_publishername":"USENIX","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"Network Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI)","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_page_range_start":"","msr_page_range_end":"","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"","msr_conference_name":"Network Systems Design and Implementation 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