The Knowledge Plane

The Knowledge Plane research concept plans to employ and extend cognitive systems technology for monitoring, diagnosing, repairing, and configuring computer networks. A further description will be found below.

Relevant Papers and Presentations

David Clark, Craig Partridge, Chris Ramming, and John Wroclawski, " A Knowledge Plane for the Internet", ACM SIGCOMM 2003, Karlsruhe, August 2003. Paper: {PDF}, Slide presentation: {PDF}.
Zhuoqing Morley Mao, Jennifer Rexford, Jia Wang, and Randy Katz, "Towards an Accurate AS-Level Traceroute Tool", ACM SIGCOMM 2003, Karlsruhe, August 2003. {PDF}.
Don Caldwell, Anna Gilbert, Joel Gottlieb, Albert Greenberg, Gisli Hjalmtysson, and Jennifer Rexford. "The Cutting EDGE of IP Router Configuration"", July 2003. {PDF}.
Mike Wawrzoniak, Larry Peterson, and Timothy Roscoe, "Sophia: An Information Plane for Networked Systems", July 2003. {PDF}.
Bradley R. Smith and J. J. Garcia-Luna-ACeves, " New Internet Routing and Forwarding for the Knowledge Plane", 2003. {PDF}.
Stephen Quirolgico, Kevin Mills, and Doug Montgomery, "Deriving Knowledge for the Knowledge Plane", June 2003. {PDF}.
Tom Dietterich, "Learning and Reasoning", May 2003. {PDF}.
Pat Langley and John Laird, "Cognitive Architectures: Research Issues and Challenges", Oct 2002. {PS}.
Tom Dietterich and Pat Langley, "Machine Learning for Cognitive Networks -- Technology Assessment and Research Challenges". {PDF}.
A Knowledge Plane for the Internet, Dave Clark, Craig Partridge, and Chris Ramming. Accepted for SIGCOMM 2003. Early draft (5 February 2003): {PDF}.
The Knowledge Plane, Chris Ramming, 31 January 2003. Slides. {Powerpoint, PDF}.
The Cognitive Metaphor, Chris Ramming, (rev) 27 January 03. PDF.
A New Vision for Network Architecture, Dave Clark, September 2002. {Postscript, PDF}.

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Introduction to the Knowledge Plane

The transparent data forwarding "plane" that is fundamental to the Internet architecture has been very successful in providing robust service in a chaotic environment of new technologies and applications as well as exponential growth. However, there are very significant challenges remaining, especially intelligent network management, fault diagnosis, attack response, and fast network configuration.

Internet vulnerabilities include:

Failures and attacks are increasingly serious.
Threats and errors propagate more quickly than human operators can respond.
Today's failure diagnosis uses only local knowledge and cannot discover global effects like worm propagation or other coordinated attacks.

Conclusion: we need better and smarter tools for controlling, diagnosing, protecting, and configuring the Internet.

A new research approach [Dave Clark, MIT] suggests the construction of a logical artifact, called the knowledge plane, in parallel with the existing simple and transparent data plane. The knowledge plane (KP) will be:

A locus for cognitive information processing about the operation of the network. Specifically, programs in the knowledge plane will collect and aggregate global information, observations, assertions, requriements, constraints, and goals for network operation.
A global, (highly) decentralized network overlay.

The KP will provide network operators as well as end users with timely, reasoned assertions about network operation, faults, and attacks. For network operators, it may also provide suggestions for remediation. In an advanced stage of this research, we expect that the loop will be closed by allowing the KP to exert direct control over nodes of the data plane. At an even later research stage, development of the KP research may suggest new requirements and mechanisms for the data plane itself.

Last updated: 29 May 03 RTB