Methodological frameworks for large-scale network analysis and design
Methodological Frameworks for Large-scale Network Analysis and Design Antonis Papachristodoulou California Institute of Technology Pasadena CA 91125 antonis@cds.caltech.edu Lun Li California Institute of Technology Pasadena CA 91125 lun@cds.caltech.edu John C Doyle California Institute of Technology Pasadena CA 91125 doyle@cds.caltech.edu ABSTRACT This paper emphasizes the need for methodological frameworks for analysis and design of large scale networks which are independent of speci c design innovations and their advocacy, with the aim of making networking a more systematic engineering discipline. Networking problems have largely confounded existing theory, and innovation based on intuition has dominated design. This paper will illustrate potential pitfalls of this practice. The general aim is to illustrate universal aspects of theoretical and methodological research that can be applied to network design and veri cation. The issues focused on will include the choice of models, including the relationship between ow and packet level descriptions, the need to account for uncertainty generated by modelling abstractions, and the challenges of dealing with network scale. The rigorous comparison of proposed schemes will be illustrated using various abstractions. While standard tools from robust control theory have been applied in this area, we will also illustrate how network-speci c challenges can drive the development of new mathematics that expand their range of applicability, and how many enormous challenges remain. or society followed to evolve. The question that arises then is how to design and analyze large-scale networks for robustness, reliability, and evolvability. The multi-objective requirements for analysis and design of such systems should be based on rigorous and repeatable design methodologies and systematic evaluation frameworks. A simple example is the Internet where the rst step towards the construction of protocols was based largely on...