| Title | POLANCO: Enforcing Natural Language Network Policies |
| Publication Type | Conference Paper |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Authors | Rivera, S., Fei, Z., Griffioen, J. |
| Conference Name | 2020 29th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN) |
| Date Published | aug |
| Keywords | authorisation, campus network, campus networks, Complexity theory, computer network security, Educational institutions, high level languages, high-level human readable language, high-level human-readable natural language, high-level language, Human Behavior, human-readable network policy definition language, natural language network policies, natural language policies, natural language processing, Natural languages, network policy, POLANCO, policy language for campus operations, printers, pubcrawl, public university Websites, Resiliency, Scalability, SDN, security, Servers, Software, software defined networking, Software Defined Networks |
| Abstract | Network policies govern the use of an institution's networks, and are usually written in a high-level human-readable natural language. Normally these policies are enforced by low-level, technically detailed network configurations. The translation from network policies into network configurations is a tedious, manual and error-prone process. To address this issue, we propose a new intermediate language called POlicy LANguage for Campus Operations (POLANCO), which is a human-readable network policy definition language intended to approximate natural language. Because POLANCO is a high-level language, the translation from natural language policies to POLANCO is straightforward. Despite being a high-level human readable language, POLANCO can be used to express network policies in a technically precise way so that policies written in POLANCO can be automatically translated into a set of software defined networking (SDN) rules and actions that enforce the policies. Moreover, POLANCO is capable of incorporating information about the current network state, reacting to changes in the network and adjusting SDN rules to ensure network policies continue to be enforced correctly. We present policy examples found on various public university websites and show how they can be written as simplified human-readable statements using POLANCO and how they can be automatically translated into SDN rules that correctly enforce these policies. |
| DOI | 10.1109/ICCCN49398.2020.9209748 |
| Citation Key | rivera_polanco_2020 |
POLANCO: Enforcing Natural Language Network Policies