NetSearch: Googling Large-scale Network Management Data

In order to ensure the service quality, modern Internet Service Providers (ISPs) invest tremendously on their network monitoring and measurement infrastructure. Vast amount of network data, including device logs, alarms, and active/passive performance measurement across different network protocols and layers, are collected and stored for analysis. As network measurement grows in scale and sophistication, it becomes increasingly challenging to effectively "search" for the relevant information that best support the needs of network operations. In this paper, we look into techniques that have been widely applied in the information retrieval and search engine domain and explore their applicability in network management domain. We observe that unlike the textural information on the Internet, network data are typically annotated with time and location information, which can be further augmented using information based on network topology, protocol and service dependency. We design NetSearch, a system that pre-processes various network data sources on data ingestion, constructs index that matches both the network spatial hierarchy model and the inherent timing/textual information contained in the data, and efficiently retrieves the relevant information that network operators search for. Through case study, we demonstrate that NetSearch is an important capability for many critical network management functions such as complex impact analysis.