Prof. Aaron Gember-Jacobson was recently awarded a four-year grant from the NSF for a project that seeks to automatically repair computer networks. Congratulations!

Modern computer networks must satisfy increasingly complex security, availability, and performance objectives to meet the diverse needs of users and applications. Consequently, programming a network to satisfy these requirements has become extremely challenging, even for highly skilled network operators. While previous work has helped operators generate policy-compliant network configurations, networks can still experience unexpected behaviors such as link failures or traffic surges, which can lead to policy violations that require a repair of the network. Today, repairs are often done manually and are error-prone. This project will develop a ground-up framework for automatically and efficiently repairing networks that do not satisfy given requirements. Building on previous work, this research lays the foundation for “zero touch networking”, where a network’s behavior is automatically managed based on high-level objectives provided by human operators. The results of this research will enable individuals without extensive training to repair network data and control planes, thus paving the way for increased stability and security in the networks on which businesses, governments, and individuals so heavily depend.

Further details can be found at https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1763512&HistoricalAwards=false