Autonomous Network Policy Conflict Avoidance via Simulation Tree Pruning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing autonomous network systems lack effective verification of intermediate states and efficient conflict avoidance during the update of multiple policies, leading to potential network abnormalities and difficulties in selecting a correct execution sequence.
Innovation Solution
A method involving the collection of network state information, generation of all multi-policy execution sequences using a policy ordering space tree, simulation of these sequences in a data plane, detection of conflicts, and pruning of the tree to select a conflict-free sequence for updating policies in an autonomous network.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If multiple policies are updated sequentially in existing autonomous network systems, then the network can be configured, but intermediate states may cause network abnormalities such as packet circulation and firewall conflicts
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by performing formal verification on the simulation network before deploying policies to the actual network. The verification process checks intermediate states during sequential policy updates to detect potential conflicts like packet circulation and firewall conflicts. This advance verification prevents network abnormalities before they occur in the production environment.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a simulation network as an intermediary between the policy configuration system and the actual network. This simulation network serves as a mediator to verify policy updates and detect conflicts without affecting the real network. The verification results from the simulation network guide the actual policy deployment, ensuring safety.
2Reliability
If all possible multi-policy execution sequences are verified to ensure conflict-free updates, then network stability is improved, but the time overhead and computational resources increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and prioritizes only the critical intermediate states that need verification during policy updates, rather than verifying all possible execution sequences. By identifying and focusing on key verification points where conflicts are most likely to occur, the system reduces verification time while maintaining network safety.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the verification parameter from checking all possible execution sequences to checking only the actual sequential execution path. This parameter change in the verification approach significantly reduces computational complexity and time overhead while still detecting conflicts in intermediate states.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for multi-policy conflict avoidance in an autonomous network comprising: collecting network state information; acquiring a set of multiple policies to be verified; constructing a policy ordering space tree containing all multi-policy execution sequences; performing a depth-first traversal on the policy ordering space tree, extracting a multi-policy execution sequence to be verified, then constructing an initial simulation data plane, injecting each policy in the multi-policy execution sequence into the simulation data plane one by one in sequence, and storing a simulation data plane after each policy is inserted; detecting whether there is a conflict in the simulation data plane generated after each policy is executed, inferring dependencies among multiple policies in the conflict policy sequence, pruning the policy ordering space tree, to efficiently select and update the multi-policy execution sequence avoiding conflicts.