trivial class of network configuration issues and
anomalies.
• To define the erroneous conditions, a deep knowl-
edge of communication protocols and systems is
necessary. Therefore the rules are to be defined by
the domain expert. However, it may be possible to
extend the system with specific rules identified by
the network administrator using the rule language.
• The process of creating rules is mostly manual,
and every update requires additional effort. How-
ever, to simplify the rule definition, an easy to un-
derstand declarative rule language was defined.
While modern methods introduced in the realm of
computer network management stems from machine-
learning algorithms, the rule-based approach is still
prevalent in practice. It is because rules are easy to
understand and rule evaluation is a deterministic pro-
cedure often offering enough information for finding
the root cause of the issue by the administrator.
7 CONCLUSION
Network diagnostics is a complex activity requiring
a lot of time and experience. We have presented a new
rule-based approach to the detection and identifica-
tion of network issues. The rules employ patterns
that consist of a sequence of value changes to identify
a sequence in network communication that possibly
represents an anomaly. This new approach automates
the labor activity conducted by network administra-
tors that use the visual representation of network ac-
tivities to identify non-standard situations.
We have implemented the proposed approach as
a proof-of-concept tool that processes capture traffic
and produces a log of identified issues. To demon-
strate the functionality of the tool, we have tested
the tool over a small amount of network data. The
results confirm that the approach has practical poten-
tial, but further evaluation is required.
Future work will focus on: (i) Use this approach
for another type of source data, such as log files or
NetFlow records. It also makes sense to think about
new types of patterns for these new data sources. (ii)
Comparing the solution (accuracy and performance)
with similar diagnostic tools. This could be difficult
because each approach aims at different network er-
rors, and accuracy will depend on created patterns
and configurations. Also, many published papers on
network diagnostics either do not provide access to
the tools or datasets used for revaluation. (iii) Reim-
plementing the tool into pipeline architecture to allow
the processing of real-time data.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the BUT FIT grant FIT-
S-20-6293, ”Application of AI methods to cyber se-
curity and control systems”.
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