NeTS: Small: The Design and Use of a Network Operating System

尽管在过去的几十年里，网络的其他领域取得了进步，但生产网络的管理仍然很原始。然而，在过去的五年中，出现了一种全新的网络管理方法。这种新方法使用？网络操作系统？向管理应用程序隐藏所有复杂的网络细节，同时为以编程方式观察和控制网络提供强大的原语。该项目主要研究三个主要领域：构建下一代网络操作系统：复杂的管理需要一个可扩展、可靠和安全的网络操作系统，同时也为网络运营商提供适当的原语集来控制他们的网络；将该网络操作系统应用于各种环境和需求：网络操作系统应支持企业网络、家庭网络、广域网和数据中心网络的管理，并应解决从访问控制到流量工程的各种问题；利用这种方法来获得对网络的更深入的理解：网络操作系统应该支持更高层次的抽象？比如策略语言、事件重构和逻辑网络？这使得运营商可以专注于管理目标，而不是实施细节。解决这些问题将使部署更安全、可靠、经济高效和可扩展的网络成为可能。此外，这个项目的软件将是开源的，让所有人都能实现这些好处。

Despite all the progress made in other areas of networking over the past few decades, the management of production networks has remained primitive. However, over the past five years a radically new approach to network management has emerged. This new approach uses a ?network operating system? to hide all the complexity of networking details from management applications while providing powerful primitives for programmatically observing and controlling the network. This project is focusing on three main areas of investigation: Building a next-generation network operating system: sophisticated management requires a network operating system that is scalable, reliable, and secure while also providing network operators with the appropriate set of primitives for controlling their networks; Applying this network operating system to a wide variety of contexts and requirements: a network operating system should support management in enterprise networks, home networks, wide-area networks, and datacenter networks, and should address issues ranging from access control to traffic engineering; Leveraging this approach to gain deeper understanding of networks: network operating systems should support higher-level abstractions ? such as policy languages, event reconstructions, and logical networks ? that allow operators to focus on management goals not implementation details. Addressing these topics will enable the deployment of more secure, reliable, cost-effective, and scalable networks. Moreover, the software from this project will be open-sourced, allowing these benefits to be realized by all.