Happy Network Administrators  Happy Packets  Happy Users WIRED Position Statement Aman Shaikh AT&T Labs – Research October 16, 2006

WIRED Position Statement 2006 Slide 2 Why Care About Network Administrators? Running networks is a challenging job –Includes service provider backbones, enterprises, educational networks Network core not simple as it was supposed to be –Scale –Geographical span –Diversity –Constant churn Internet is now required to be more than best effort –Real-time mission critical applications –We rely on the Internet for pretty much everything

WIRED Position Statement 2006 Slide 3 Lack of Management Support IP networks were not built with manageability in mind –SNMP, Syslog and Netflow are supported by routers –Support is often not adequate Lack of support most acutely felt at the routing layer –Hard to answer even basic questions like: “What path did traffic take from router A to B some x hours ago?” “I can’t reach my customer; when did his/her route disappear from my network and why?”

WIRED Position Statement 2006 Slide 4 Life is not that Bad! Networking research has started focusing on the management issues –INM workshop at SIGCOMM 2006 –NetTS workshop at SIGCOMM 2004 –Other workshops and conferences Several papers have appeared in research forums –New management paradigms (e.g., 4D architecture) –New control plane architectures (e.g., IRSCP) –Management tools (e.g., Route Monitors, Beacons) –Control plane anomaly detection

WIRED Position Statement 2006 Slide 5 Long Way to Go… If we want to achieve PSTN-like 5-nine reliability And support all kinds of applications And have ubiquitous computing and communication

WIRED Position Statement 2006 Slide 6 So What Can Researchers Do? Configuration Management Trouble-shooting Network maintenance and upgrade Security

WIRED Position Statement 2006 Slide 7 Configuration = headaches! Configuration commands are often primitive, un- intuitive and complicated –How to design better models and abstractions? So that operators can express their intent more directly and flexibly Configuration happens on a per-device basis –How to move to network-level configuration? Too many configurable parameters and knobs –How to move from trial-and-error and arcane default values to science and engineering for setting the parameters? –Can we design systems that can adaptively set and change settings based on … Performance goals Observed performance

WIRED Position Statement 2006 Slide 8 Trouble-shooting: Whose Fault is it Anyway? What’s in a Router’s Mind? –SNMP and syslog are not adequate, and not reliable –Route monitors are great but need careful engineering rules and procedures –What is really needed: “passive sessions” over which routing information can be collected Send routes over these sessions to monitoring session Also include some root cause information, especially for BGP Routing protocols interact in strange ways –Better isolation of protocols –Better models when protocols do interact Failures often occur over time in gradual manner –Need methods for pro-active detection and prediction Lack of correlation across time, space and layers!

WIRED Position Statement 2006 Slide 9 Maintenance Grief! Maintenance and upgrade require disruption in service –Need to modify routing protocols so that they can be upgraded without dropping sessions E.g., graceful restart mechanisms –Design routers so that they can be upgraded in service E.g., through seamless transfer of control between route processors Scheduling upgrades is not always easy –Scale is huge Size of the network and the number of customers –Too many constraints –Big question: how to gauge the impact of a proposed maintenance/upgrade on network performance and customers? Maintenance/upgrades often go bad –Need robust maintenance/upgrade procedures –How to back out smoothly out of such tasks? Number of tasks often too high –How to design robust routers that require fewer maintenance?

WIRED Position Statement 2006 Slide 10 Security: Attack of the worms, viruses, … Security vulnerability of routing protocols is well known Quite a few solutions have been proposed But no deployment  Need to come up with solutions that can be (incrementally) deployed

WIRED Position Statement 2006 Slide 11 In Closing… Happy Network Administrators  Happy Packets  Happy Users