Most of the knowledge needed for configuring and debugging networks is held in peoples' heads and is not automated. This has led to consumer frustration, networks that are less reliable than desirable, and high labor costs at the service providers. Automation is an answer but requires that we make explicit, or formalize, relationships between network entities. This talk will describe an approach to building a semantics of a layered stack of protocols and the challenges of building next generation network protocols such that their semantics are easily understandable.

Bryan Lyles is a Chief Scientist in the Mobile Networking Research group at Telcordia Technologies, Applied Research Division. Prior to moving to Telcordia he was Chief Scientist for Sprint where he initiated the Sprint research program on Internet monitoring as well as various research projects in computing systems, security, switching and optical transmission. He spent a decade at Xerox PARC where, as a member of the research staff in the Computer Science Lab, he was responsible for much of the early work on ATM as a local area network and for ATM standards such as AAL 5. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Rochester and his B.A. degree from the University of Virginia. Dr. Lyles is the holder of 21 patents on network related technology.