A Smart Network Repository Based on Graph Database

Published

January 25, 2024

Author(s)

Amar Abane, Abdella Battou, Mheni Merzouki, Tao Zhang

Abstract

To address the increasing complexity of network management and the limitations of data repositories in handling the various network operational data, this paper proposes a novel repository design that uniformly represents network operational data while allowing for a multiple abstractions access to the information. This smart repository simplifies network management functions by enabling network verification directly within the repository. The data is organized in a knowledge graph compatible with any general-purpose graph database, offering a comprehensive and extensible network repository. Performance evaluations confirm the feasibility of the proposed design. The repository's ability to natively support 'what-if' scenario evaluation is demonstrated by verifying Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) route policies and analyzing forwarding behavior with virtual Traceroute.

Proceedings Title

Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS)

Conference Dates

October 26-27, 2023

Conference Location

Paris, FR

Conference Title

Mobile, Secure, and Programmable Networking, 9th International Conference, MSPN 2023

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52426-4_6

Local Download

Keywords

network management, network data, repository, knowledge graph, SDN, Neo4j, control plane verification, data plane analysis

Citation

Abane, A. , Battou, A. , Merzouki, M. and Zhang, T. (2024), A Smart Network Repository Based on Graph Database, Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Paris, FR, [online], https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52426-4_6, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=956876 (Accessed October 8, 2025)