Assisted Network Change Service for Enterprise Topology
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Solution Overview
Problem
The complexity of managing network changes in enterprise and Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) deployments is high due to the increasing number of applications, user types, sites, and devices, requiring network expertise and manual interactions, which limits customers' understanding of their network topology and delays change implementation.
Innovation Solution
An assisted network change service that provides self-service capabilities, using an intelligent backend to build context, recommend changes, and automate network topology construction, allowing customers to make dynamic changes to virtual network function service chains with automatic rollback options, enhancing network resource management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If manual network change management is used, then network expertise and control are maintained, but implementation time and operational complexity increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables customers to autonomously make network changes through a self-service portal interface. The intelligent backend automatically validates changes against network topology and policies, providing structured guidance without requiring manual expert intervention. This resolves the contradiction by allowing customers to self-serve while maintaining reliability through automated validation.
Solution Approach 2:
An automated change management system acts as an intermediary between customer change requests and network infrastructure. The system includes components that automatically discover network topology, validate changes, and coordinate implementation across multiple network functions. This intermediary layer maintains control and reliability while dramatically reducing implementation time compared to manual processes.
2Ease of operation
If comprehensive network topology understanding is provided, then customer autonomy and self-service capability improve, but system complexity and data processing requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments network topology information into modular components that can be independently discovered, stored, and processed. The intelligent backend breaks down complex network structures into manageable units that can be efficiently queried and validated. This segmentation reduces system complexity while enabling comprehensive topology understanding for customer self-service.
Solution Approach 2:
The automated change management system performs multiple functions: network topology discovery, change validation, policy enforcement, and coordination of network function updates. By consolidating these diverse functions into a single multi-functional platform, the system provides comprehensive topology understanding without proportionally increasing complexity.
3Reliability
If automated validation and context-building are implemented, then change safety and reliability improve, but processing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs network topology discovery and context building in advance, before actual changes are implemented. By pre-establishing the network context and validating potential changes against discovered topology, the system ensures change safety without requiring intensive computational resources during the actual change execution. This preliminary action shifts computational load to off-peak times.
Solution Approach 2:
The automated validation system continuously monitors network state and provides feedback on proposed changes. The intelligent backend uses this feedback to dynamically adjust validation depth and computational resource allocation. When network conditions are stable and topology is well-understood, validation can be lighter; when changes are complex or topology is uncertain, more intensive validation is applied. This feedback-driven approach maintains reliability while optimizing resource consumption.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods described herein provide an assisted network change service. A network device stores a record of network resources for a customer network and generates, based on the record, a visual representation of the network topology for a selected site of the customer network. The network device receives, from the customer, input for a change to configuration parameters of one of the network resources and verifies if the change to the configuration parameters is compatible with other settings in the customer network. When the change to the configuration parameters is compatible with other settings in the customer network, the network device generates a change request based on the configuration parameters and invokes provisioning to implement the change request for the customer network.