research-article

Merlin: A Language for Provisioning Network Resources

Authors:

Shrutarshi Basu,

Parisa Jalili Marandi,

Fernando Pedone,

Robert Kleinberg,

Emin Gun Sirer,

Nate FosterAuthors Info & Claims

CoNEXT '14: Proceedings of the 10th ACM International on Conference on emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies

Pages 213 - 226

https://doi.org/10.1145/2674005.2674989

Published: 02 December 2014 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents Merlin, a new framework for managing resources in software-defined networks. With Merlin, administrators express high-level policies using programs in a declarative language. The language includes logical predicates to identify sets of packets, regular expressions to encode forwarding paths, and arithmetic formulas to specify bandwidth constraints. The Merlin compiler maps these policies into a constraint problem that determines bandwidth allocations using parameterizable heuristics. It then generates code that can be executed on the network elements to enforce the policies. To allow network tenants to dynamically adapt policies to their needs, Merlin provides mechanisms for delegating control of sub-policies and for verifying that modifications made to sub-policies do not violate global constraints. Experiments demonstrate the expressiveness and effectiveness of Merlin on real-world topologies and applications. Overall, Merlin simplifies network administration by providing high-level abstractions for specifying network policies that provision network resources.

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Cited By

Xing JHsu KXia YCai YLi YZhang YChen A(2024)Occam: A Programming System for Reliable Network ManagementProceedings of the Nineteenth European Conference on Computer Systems10.1145/3627703.3650086(148-162)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3627703.3650086
Grewal KGodfrey PHsu J(2023)Expressive Policies For Microservice NetworksProceedings of the 22nd ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks10.1145/3626111.3628181(280-286)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626111.3628181
Wang YLi ZJiang CQiu XRao S(2023)Comparative Synthesis: Learning Near-Optimal Network Designs by QueryProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35711977:POPL(91-120)Online publication date: 11-Jan-2023
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Index Terms

Merlin: A Language for Provisioning Network Resources
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Context specific languages
      1. Specialized application languages
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems

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cover image ACM Conferences

CoNEXT '14: Proceedings of the 10th ACM International on Conference on emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies

December 2014

438 pages

ISBN:9781450332798

DOI:10.1145/2674005

General Chairs:
Aruna Seneviratne
NICTA/UNSW, Australia
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Technicolor, France
,
Jim Kurose
Umass, USA
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Columbia University, USA
,
Luigi Rizzo
University of Pisa, Italy

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Published: 02 December 2014

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CoNEXT '14: Conference on emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies

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CoNEXT '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 27 of 133 submissions, 20%;

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Cited By

Xing JHsu KXia YCai YLi YZhang YChen A(2024)Occam: A Programming System for Reliable Network ManagementProceedings of the Nineteenth European Conference on Computer Systems10.1145/3627703.3650086(148-162)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3627703.3650086
Grewal KGodfrey PHsu J(2023)Expressive Policies For Microservice NetworksProceedings of the 22nd ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks10.1145/3626111.3628181(280-286)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626111.3628181
Wang YLi ZJiang CQiu XRao S(2023)Comparative Synthesis: Learning Near-Optimal Network Designs by QueryProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35711977:POPL(91-120)Online publication date: 11-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3571197
Kang NZhang PLi HWen SJi CYang Y(2023)Network Specification Mining with High Fidelity and Scalability2023 IEEE 31st International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP)10.1109/ICNP59255.2023.10355598(1-11)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNP59255.2023.10355598
Hussain MShah NAmin RAlshamrani SAlotaibi ARaza S(2022)Software-Defined Networking: Categories, Analysis, and Future DirectionsSensors10.3390/s2215555122:15(5551)Online publication date: 25-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.3390/s22155551
Guo DChen SGao KXiang QZhang YYang YKuipers FOrda A(2022)FlashProceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference10.1145/3544216.3544246(314-335)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544216.3544246
Jepsen TFattaholmanan AMoshref MFoster NCarzaniga ASoule R(2022)Forwarding and Routing With Packet SubscriptionsIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2022.317206630:6(2464-2479)Online publication date: Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TNET.2022.3172066
Li HZhang PSun GCao WHu CShan DPan TFu Q(2022)Compiling Cross-Language Network Programs Into Hybrid Data PlaneIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2021.313230330:3(1088-1103)Online publication date: Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TNET.2021.3132303
He LWang SXu YKuang PCao JLiu YLi XPeng S(2022)Enabling Application-Aware Traffic Engineering in IPv6 NetworksIEEE Network10.1109/MNET.005.210044036:2(42-49)Online publication date: Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/MNET.005.2100440
Subramanian KAbhashkumar AD'Antoni LAkella A(2021)D2RProceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Symposium on SDN Research (SOSR)10.1145/3482898.3483360(148-161)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2021
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