An Architecture for a Network Anomaly Detection Framework

1.1. Motivation

When operational or configurational changes in connectivity services are happening, the objective therefore is to detect interruption at network operation faster than the users using those connectivity services.¶

In order to achieve this objective, automation in network monitoring is required since the amount or people operating the network are simply outnumbered by the amount of people using connectivity services.¶

This automation needs to monitor network changes holistically by monitoring all 3 network planes simultaneously for a given connectivity service and detect whether that change is service disruptive, received packets are no longer forwarded to the desired destination, or not. A change in control and management plane indicate a network topology change. Where a change in the forwarding plane describe how the packets are being forwarded. Or in other words, control and management plane changes can be attributed to network state changes where forwarding plane to the outcome of these network state changes.¶

Since changes in networks are happening all the time due to the vast number of dependencies, a scoring system is needed to indicate whether the change is disruptive, the amount of transport sessions, flows, are affected and whether such interruptions are usual or exceptional.¶

1.2. Scope

Such objectives can be achieved by applying checks on network modelled time series data containing semantics describing their dependencies across network planes. These checks can be based on domain knowledge, in essence, how networks should work, or on outlier detection techniques that identify measurements deviating significantly from the norm due to human factors.¶

The described scope does not take the connectivity service intend into account nor does it verify whether the intend is being achieved all the time. Changes to the service intend causing service disruptions are therefore considered service disruptions where on monitoring systems taking the intend into account this is considered as intended.¶

2.1. Terminology

This document defines the following terms:¶

Outlier Detection: Is a systematic approach to identify rare data points deviating significantly from the majority.¶

Service Disruption Detection (SDD): The process of detecting a service degradation by discovering anomalies in network monitoring data.¶

Service Disruption Detection System (SDDS): A system allowing to perform SDD.¶

Additionally it makes use of the terms defined in [I-D.ietf-nmop-terminology] and [I-D.netana-nmop-network-anomaly-lifecycle].¶

The following terms are used as defined in [I-D.ietf-nmop-terminology] :¶

• System¶

• Resource¶

• Characteristic¶

• Condition¶

• Change¶

• Detect¶

• Event¶

• State¶

• Relevance¶

• Occurrence¶

• Incident¶

• Problem¶

• Symptom¶

• Cause¶

• Root Cause¶

• Consolidation¶

• Alert¶

• Transient¶

• Intermittent¶

Figure 2 in Section 3 of [I-D.ietf-nmop-terminology] shows characteristics of observed operational network telemetry metrics.¶

Figure 4 in Section 3 of [I-D.ietf-nmop-terminology] shows relationships between, state, relevant state, problem, symptom, cause and alert.¶

Figure 5 in Section 3 of [I-D.ietf-nmop-terminology] shows relationships between problem, symptom, cause and root cause.¶

The following terms are used as defined in [I-D.netana-nmop-network-anomaly-lifecycle] :¶

• False Positive¶

• False Negative¶

2.2. Outlier Detection

Outlier Detection, also known as anomaly detection, describes a systematic approach to identify rare data points deviating significantly from the majority. Outliers can manifest as single data point or as a sequence of data points. There are multiple ways in general to classify anomalies, but for the context of this draft, the following three classes are taken into account:¶

Global outliers:

An outlier is considered "global" if its behavior is outside the entirety of the considered data set. For example, if the average dropped packet count is between 0 and 10 per minute and a small time-window gets the value 1000, this is considered a global anomaly.¶

Contextual outliers:

An outlier is considered "contextual" if its behavior is within a normal (expected) range, but it would not be expected based on some context. Context can be defined as a function of multiple parameters, such as time, location, etc. For example, the forwarded packet volume overnight reaches levels which might be totally normal for the daytime, but anomalous and unexpected for the nighttime.¶

Collective outliers:

An outlier is considered "collective" if the behavior of each single data point that are part of the anomaly are within expected ranges (so they are not anomalous it either a contextual or a global sense), but the group, taking all the data points together, is. Note that the group can be made within a single time series (a sequence of data points is anomalous) or across multiple metrics (e.g. if looking at two metrics together, the combined behavior turns out to be anomalous). In Network Telemetry time series, one way this can manifest is that the amount of network paths and interface state changes matches the time range when the forwarded packet volume decreases as a group.¶

For each outlier a score between 0 and 1 is being calculated. The higher the value, the higher the probability that the observed data point is an outlier. Anomaly detection: A survey [VAP09] gives additional details on anomaly detection and its types.¶

2.3. Knowledge Based Detection

Knowledge-based anomaly detection, also known as rule-based anomaly detection, is a technique used to identify anomalies or outliers by comparing them against predefined rules or patterns. This approach relies on the use of domain-specific knowledge to set standards, thresholds, or rules for what is considered "normal" behavior. Traditionally, these rules are established manually by a knowledgeable network engineer.¶

Additionally, in the context of network anomaly detection, the knowledge-based approach works hand in hand with the deterministic understanding of the network, which is reflected in network modeling. Components are organized into three network planes: the Management Plane, the Control Plane, and the Forwarding Plane. A component can relate to a physical, virtual, or configurational entity, or to a sum of packets belonging to a flow being forwarded in a network.¶

Such relationships can also be modelled in a Digital Map to automate that process. [I-D.havel-nmop-digital-map-concept] examples a a concept and [I-D.havel-nmop-digital-map] an implementation for such network modelled relationships.¶

2.4. Data Mesh

The Data Mesh [Deh22] Architecture distinguishes between operational and analytical data. Operational data refers to collected data from operational systems. While analytical data refers to insights gained from operational data.¶

3.1. Service Inventory

A service inventory is used to obtain a list of the connectivity services for which Anomaly Detection is to be performed. A service profiling process may be executed on the service in order to define a configuration of the service disruption detection approach and parameters to be used.¶

3.2. SDD Configuration

Based on this service list and potential preliminary service profiling, a configuration of the Service Disruption Detection is produced. It defines the set of approaches that need to be applied to perform SDD, as well as parameters that are to be set when executing the algorithms performing SDD per se.¶

As the service lives on, the configuration may be adapted as a result of an evolution of the profiling being performed, as the result of a postmortem analysis being produced as a result of an event impacting the service, or the occurrence of false positives being raised by the alerting system.¶

3.3. Operational Data Collection

Collection of network monitoring data involves the management of the subscriptions to network telemetry on nodes of the network, and the configuration of the collection infrastructure to receive the monitoring data produced by the network.¶

The monitoring data produced by the collection infrastructure is then streamed through a message broker system. for further processing.¶

Networks tend to produce extremely large amounts of monitoring data. To preserve scaling and reduce costs, decisions need to be made on the duration of retention of such data in storage, and at which level of storage they need to be kept. A retention time need to be set on the raw data produced by the collection system, in accordance to their utility for further used. This aspect will be elaborated in further sections.¶

3.4. Operational Data Aggregation

Aggregation is the process of producing data upon which detection of a service disruption can be performed, based on collected network monitoring data.¶

Pre-processing of collected network monitoring data is usually performed so as to produce input for the Service Disruption Detection component. This can be achieved in multiple ways, depending on the architecture of the SDD component. As an example, the granularity at which forwarding data is produced by the network may be too high for the SDD algorithms, and instead be aggregated into a coarser dimension for SDD execution.¶

A retention time also needs to be decided upon for Aggregated data. Note that the retention time must be set carefully, in accordance with the replay ability requirement discussed in Section 3.8.¶

3.5. Service Disruption Detection

Service Disruption Detection processes the aggregated network data in order to decide whether a service is degraded to the point where network operation needs to be alerted of an ongoing problem within the network.¶

Two key aspects need to be considered when designing the SDD component. First, the way the data is being processed needs to be carefully designed, as networks typically produce extremely large amounts of data which may hinder the scalability of the architecture. Second, the algorithms used to make a decision to alert the operator need to be designed in such a way that the operator can trust that a targeted Service Disruption will be detected (no false negatives), while not spamming the operator with alerts that do not reflect an actual issue within the network (false positives) leading to alert fatigue.¶

Two approaches are typically followed to present the data to the SDD system. Classically, the aggregated data can be stored in a database that is polled at regular intervals by the SDD component for decision making. Alternatively, a streaming approach can be followed so as to process the data while they are being consumed from the collection component.¶

For SDD per-se, two families of algorithms can be decided upon. First, knowledge based detection approaches can be used, mimicking the process that human operators follow when looking at the data. Machine Learning based outlier detection based approaches to detect deviations from the norm.¶

3.6. Alerting

When the SDD component decides that a service is undergoing a disruption, a alert notification needs to be sent to the alert and problem management system. Multiple practical aspects need to be taken into account in this component.¶

When the issue lasts longer than the interval at which the SDD component runs, the alerting mechanism should not create multiple tickets to the operator, so as to not overwhelm the management of the issue. However, the information provided along with the alert should be kept up to date during the full duration of the issue.¶

3.7. Postmortem

   Network Anomaly
     Detection          Detected Symptoms
+-------------------+           &
|   +-----------+   |   Network Anomalies
|   | Detection |---|-------------+
|   |   Stage   |   |             |
|   +-----------+   |             v
+---------^---------+        +-------------------+      Labels     +------------+
          |                  | Anomaly Detection |---------------->| Validation |
          |                  |   Label Store     |<----------------|   Stage    |
          |                  +-------------------+     Revised     +------------+
   +------------+                 |                    Labels
   | Refinement |                 |
   |   Stage    |<----------------+
   +------------+        Historical Symptoms
                                  &
                          Network Anomalies

Validation and refinement are performed during Postmortem.¶

From an Anomaly Detection Lifecycle point of view as described in [I-D.netana-nmop-network-anomaly-lifecycle], the Service Disruption Detection Configuration evolves over time, iteratively, looping over three main phases: detection, validation and refinement.¶

The Detection phase produces the alerts that are sent to the Alert and Problem Management System and at the same time it stores the network anomaly and symptom labels into the Label Store. This enables network engineers to review the labels to validate and edit them as needed.¶

The Validation stage is typically performed by network engineers reviewing the results of the detection and indicating which symptoms and network anomalies have been useful for the identification of problems in the network. The original labels from the Service Disruption Detection are analyzed and an updated set of more accurate labels is provided back to the label store.¶

The resulting labels will be then provided back into the Network Anomaly Detection via its refinement capabilities: the refinement is about the update of the Service Disruption Detection configuration in order to improve the results of the detection (e.g. false positives, false negatives, accuracy of the boundaries, etc.).¶

3.8. Replaying

When a service disruption has been detected, it is essential for the human operator to be able to analyze the data which led to the raising of an Alert. It is thus important that a SSDS preserves both the data which led to the creation of the alert as well as human understandable information on why the data led to the raising of an alert.¶

In early stages of operations or when experimenting with a SDDS, it is common that the parameters used for SDD are to be fined tuned. This process is facilitated by designing the SDDS architecture in a way that allows to rerun the SDD algorithms on the same input.¶

Data retention, as well as its level, need to be defined in order not to sacrifice the ability of replaying SDD execution for the sake of improving its accuracy.¶

4.1. Cosmos Bright Lights

This architecture have been developed as part of a proof of concept started in September 2022 first in a dedicated network lab environment and later in December 2022 in Swisscom production to monitor a limited amount of 16 L3 VPN connectivity services.¶

At the Applied Networking Research Workshop at IRTF 117 the architecture was the first time published in the following academic paper: [Ahf23].¶

Since December 2022, 20 connectivity service disruptions have been monitored and 52 false positives due to time series database temporarily not being real-time and missing traffic profiling, comparing to previous week was not applicable, occurred. Out of 20 connectivity service disruptions 6 parameters where monitored and 3 times 1, 8 times 2, 6 times 3, 2 times 4 parameters recognized the service disruption.¶

A real-time streaming based version has been deployed in Swisscom production as a proof of concept in June 2024 monitoring approximate >12'000 L3 VPN's concurrently. Improved profiling capabilities are currently under development.¶