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Safely and automatically updating in-network ACL configurations with intent language

Published: 19 August 2019 Publication History
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  • Abstract

    In-network Access Control List (ACL) is an important technique in ensuring network-wide connectivity and security. As cloud-scale WANs today constantly evolve in size and complexity, in-network ACL rules are becoming increasingly more complex. This presents a great challenge to the updating process of ACL configurations: network operators are frequently required to update "tangled" ACL rules across thousands of devices to meet diverse business requirements, and even a single ACL misconfiguration may lead to network disruptions. Such increasing challenges call for an automated system to improve the efficiency and correctness of ACL updates. This paper presents Jinjing, a system that aids Alibaba's network operators in automatically and correctly updating ACL configurations in Alibaba's global WAN. Jinjing allows the operators to express in a declarative language, named LAI, their update intent (e.g., ACL migration and traffic control). Then, Jinjing automatically synthesizes ACL update plans that satisfy their intent. At the heart of Jinjing, we develop a set of novel verification and synthesis techniques to rigorously guarantee the correctness of update plans. In Alibaba, our operators have used Jinjing to efficiently update their ACLs and have thus prevented significant service downtime.

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        cover image ACM Conferences
        SIGCOMM '19: Proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication
        August 2019
        526 pages
        ISBN:9781450359566
        DOI:10.1145/3341302
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        Publication History

        Published: 19 August 2019

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        Author Tags

        1. access control list
        2. domain specific language
        3. network configurations
        4. synthesis
        5. verification

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        SIGCOMM '19
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        SIGCOMM '19: ACM SIGCOMM 2019 Conference
        August 19 - 23, 2019
        Beijing, China

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        Overall Acceptance Rate 554 of 3,547 submissions, 16%

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        • (2024)Human-Intent-Driven Cellular Configuration Generation Using Program SynthesisIEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications10.1109/JSAC.2023.334538742:3(658-668)Online publication date: Mar-2024
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