  While SDNs enable more flexible and adaptive network operations, (logically)
centralized reconfigurations introduce overheads and delays, which can limit
network reactivity. This paper initiates the study of a more distributed
approach, in which the consistent network updates are implemented by the
switches and routers directly in the data plane. In particular, our approach
leverages concepts from local proof labeling systems, which allows the data
plane elements to locally check network properties, and we show that this is
sufficient to obtain global network guarantees. We demonstrate our approach
considering three fundamental use cases, and analyze its benefits in terms of
performance and fault-tolerance.
