Abstract

Enterprise networks are important, with size and complexity even surpassing carrier networks. In this talk, I present a systematic design approach to accomplish two key tasks of enterprise design: virtual local area networks (VLANs) and reachability control. The focus on these tasks is due to their complexity, prevalence, and time-consuming nature. In particular, I detail three aspects of the approach. First, I show how the design tasks may be formulated in terms of network-wide performance, security, and resilience requirements. The formulations capture the correctness and feasibility constraints on the design, and they model each task as one of optimizing desired criteria subject to the constraints. The optimization criteria may further be customized to meet operator-preferred design strategies. Second, I describe a set of algorithms to solve the problems that have been formulated. Third, I demonstrate the practicality and value of the systematic design approach through results from a set of validation experiments on a large-scale campus network with hundreds of routers and VLA Ns. * Joint work with Eric Sung, Xin Sun, and Sanjay Rao from Purdue University and David Maltz from Microsoft Research.