Rule-Based Network Service Provisioning

Abstract

Due to the unprecedented development of networks, manual network service provisioning is becoming increasingly risky, error-prone, expensive, and time-consuming. To solve this problem,rule-based methods can provide adequate leverage for automating various network management tasks. This paper presents a rule-based solution for automated network service provisioning. The proposed approach captures configuration data interdependencies using high-level, service-specific, user-configurable rules. We focus on the service validation task, which is illustrated by means of a case study. Based on numerical results, we analyse the influence of the network-level complexity factors and rule descriptive features on the rule efficiency. This analysis shows the operators how to increase rule efficiency while keeping the rules simple and the rule set compact. We present a technique that allows operators to increase the error coverage, and we show that high error coverage scales well when the complexity of networks and services increases. We reassess the correlation function between specific rule efficiency and rule complexity metrics found in previous work, and show that this correlation function holds for various sizes, types, and complexities of networks and services.