Abstract

This talk will introduce Merlin, a new framework for managing software-defined networks. With Merlin, administrators express high-level policies using programs in a declarative language based on regular expressions. The compiler automatically partitions these policies into components that can be placed on a variety of devices including switches, middleboxes, and end hosts. It uses a constraint solver based on parameterizable heuristics to determine allocations of network resources such as paths and bandwidth. To facilitate management of federated networks, Merlin also provides mechanisms that allow sub-policies to be delegated and further constrained by tenants, and tools for verifying that delegated sub-policies conform to the global policy. Overall, Merlin simplifies the task of network administration by providing high-level abstractions for specifying network policies and scalable infrastructure for enforcing them. Merlin is joint work with Shrutarshi Basu, Robert Soulé, Robert Kleinberg, and Emin Gün Sirer.