Semantic Web-Based Management of Routing Configurations

Today, network operators typically reason about network behaviour by observing the effects of a particular configuration in operation. This configuration process typically involves logging configuration changes and rolling back to a previous version when a problem arises. Advanced network operators (more each day) use policy-based routing languages to define the routing configuration and tools based on systematic verification techniques to ensure that operational behaviour is consistent with the intended behaviour. These tools help operators to reason about properties of routing protocols. However, these languages and tools work in low-level, i.e. they focus on properties, parameters, and elements of routing protocols. However, network operators receive high-level policies that must be refined to low level parameters before they can be applied. These high-level policies should consider other properties (e.g. extensibility or reasoning capabilities), parameters (e.g. time period, localization or QoS parameters), and elements (e.g. AAA individuals or resources), when the network configuration is defined. We believe that there is a need of broader approaches in languages and tools for defining routing configurations that are more powerful and integrated to other network elements. This article provides the main ideas behind the specification of routing policies using formal languages which enable the description of semantics. These semantics make easier the policy refinement process and allows describing an automated process for doing conflict detection on these policies.