  The proliferation of networked devices, systems, and applications that we
depend on every day makes managing networks more important than ever. The
increasing security, availability, and performance demands of these
applications suggest that these increasingly difficult network management
problems be solved in real time, across a complex web of interacting protocols
and systems. Alas, just as the importance of network management has increased,
the network has grown so complex that it is seemingly unmanageable. In this new
era, network management requires a fundamentally new approach. Instead of
optimizations based on closed-form analysis of individual protocols, network
operators need data-driven, machine-learning-based models of end-to-end and
application performance based on high-level policy goals and a holistic view of
the underlying components. Instead of anomaly detection algorithms that operate
on offline analysis of network traces, operators need classification and
detection algorithms that can make real-time, closed-loop decisions. Networks
should learn to drive themselves. This paper explores this concept, discussing
how we might attain this ambitious goal by more closely coupling measurement
with real-time control and by relying on learning for inference and prediction
about a networked application or system, as opposed to closed-form analysis of
individual protocols.
