A study of configuration evolution of an operational IP backbone network

Configuration errors are proved to be the main reasons for network interruption and anomalies. Many researchers have paid their attention to configuration analysis and provisioning, but few works focus on understanding the configuration evolution. In this paper, we uncover the configuration evolution of an operational IP backbone based on the weekly reports gathered from January 2006 to January 2013. We find that rate limiting and launching routes for new customers are configured most frequently. In addition, we conduct an analysis of network failures and find that link failures are the main causes for network failures. We suggest that we should configure redundant links for the links which are easy to break down. At last, according to the analysis results, we illustrate how to provide semi-automated configuration for rate limiting and adding customers.