Posing a Network Data Synchronisation Protocol (NDSP) concept

Data quality is one of the biggest challenges we face in OSS. A product could be technically perfect, but if the data being pumped into it is poor, then the user experience of the product will be awful – the OSS becomes unusable, and that in itself generates a data quality death spiral.

This becomes even more important for the autonomous, self-healing, programmable, cooperative networks being developed (think IoT, virtualised networks, Self-Organizing Networks). If we look at IoT networks for example, they’ll be expected to operate unattended for long periods, but with code and data auto-propagating between nodes to ensure a level of self-optimisation.

So today I’d like to pose a question. What if we could develop the equivalent of Network Time Protocol (NTP) for data? Just as NTP synchronises clocking across networks, Network Data Synchronisation Protocol (NDSP) would synchronise data across our networks through a feedback-loop / synchronisation algorithm.

Of course there are differences from NTP. NTP only tries to coordinate one data field (time) along a common scale (time as measured along a 64+64 bits continuum). The only parallel for network data is in life-cycle state changes (eg in-service, port up/down, etc).

For NTP, the stratum of the clock is defined (see image below from wikipedia).

This has analogies with data, where some data sources can be seen to be more reliable than others (ie primary sources rather than secondary or tertiary sources). However, there are scenarios where stratum 2 sources (eg OSS) might push state changes down through stratum 1 (eg NMS) and into stratum 0 (the network devices). An example might be renaming of a hostname or pushing a new service into the network.

One challenge would be the vast different data sets and how to disseminate / reconcile across the network without overloading it with management / communications packets. The other would be that format consistency. I once had a device type that had four different port naming conventions, and that was just within its own NMS! Imagine how many port name variations (and translations) might have existed across the multiple inventories that exist in our networks. The good thing about the NDSP concept is that it might force greater consistency across different vendor platforms.

Another would be that NDSP would become a huge security target as it would have the power to change configurations and because of its reach through the network.

So what do you think? Has the NDSP concept already been developed? Have you implemented something similar in your OSS? What are the scenarios in which it could succeed? Or fail?

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