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From Network Verification to Synthesis: Breaking New Ground in Network Automation

Project description

Improving network development by adopting a new method

In the past few decades, the world has been depending on networks for many tasks like the provision of internet services, emergency calls, complex systems and platforms. But these networks due to human-induced misconfigurations have been plagued by some big problems. These errors are caused by the fundamental gap between turning complex requirements and needs into low-level device configurations and the attempt by network operators to bridge this gap manually. The EU-funded SyNET project aims to bridge this gap with an innovative solution that is the development of user-aware, robustness-aware and performance-aware synthesis, by mixing formal procedures and probabilistic models with the user-intuitive interfaces to automatically produce low-level device configurations from complex requirements.

Objective

Nearly half of Japan without Internet for hours; thousands of airline passengers grounded; 600+ emergency calls not received. These are just three recent illustrations of the consequences of human-induced network misconfigurations. Such errors are caused by a fundamental gap: distilling the high-level requirements network operators have in mind into complex, low-level device configurations. In 2018, network operators are still trying to bridge this gap manually.

The goal of this proposal is to address this gap by automatically synthesizing low-level configurations out of high-level requirements. This is a hard, inter-disciplinary challenge requiring development of new fundamental methods spanning multiple scientific fields including computer networks, programming languages, and probabilistic reasoning. Our vision is akin to program synthesis, a new programming paradigm in which “one tells the computer what to do, not how to do it”.

We propose to address this challenge via three work packages: (i) user-aware synthesis where we develop techniques to facilitate how operators communicate their intents and define the space of configurations to search over; (ii) robustness-aware synthesis where we develop synthesis techniques that can enforce probabilistic properties (e.g. minimum reliability level) in uncertain network environments; and (iii) performance-aware synthesis where we develop methods to synthesize more performant configurations (e.g. to make the network converge faster).

We believe SyNET will trigger a paradigm shift and spearhead the next generation of network management tools blending formal methods, probabilistic models, and user-intuitive interfaces. By alleviating the need to configure networks, SyNET promises to avoid the vast majority of downtimes plaguing today’s networks and to make tomorrow’s networks more flexible and, ultimately, more efficient.

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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ERC-STG - Starting Grant

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2019-STG

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Host institution

EIDGENOESSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZUERICH
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 500 000,00
Address
Raemistrasse 101
8092 Zuerich
Switzerland

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Region
Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera Zürich Zürich
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 500 000,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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