Towards a semantic virtualization of configurations

Configuration information in network devices is stored in an internal data structure that can be accessed through various means. However, the exact organization of the parameters, and therefore the actual way of reaching them, does not necessarily reflect a semantically sound view of the configuration operations in all situations. In this paper, we propose the use of configuration dependency rules to provide a semantic virtualization of the parameters. We show how this virtualization can be superimposed with minimal interference over current configuration protocols, taking Netconf as an example.