一句话：提出比较式合成框架，通过 Validate/Compare 查询在目标不明确时合成近优网络设计，并实现 Net10Q。
广域网管理需在冲突指标间权衡并公平、优先地分配流量，但实践中架构师必须将意图精确编码为形式优化模型（如效用函数），并依赖手动调参，十分困难。本文首次尝试用交互式程序合成处理目标不确定的网络设计问题，提出比较式合成框架：仅通过 Validate 与 Compare 两类查询生成近最优程序，而无需显式给出目标。作者给出首个投票引导学习算法，在每轮选择最具信息量的查询，并分析其收敛速率。他们还实现 Net10Q，在四个真实网络案例上使用黑盒 oracle 和仿真实验评估，并开展由网络研究者与从业者参与的试点用户研究。理论与实验结果均表明该方向具有前景。
When managing wide-area networks, network architects must decide how to balance multiple conflicting metrics, and ensure fair allocations to competing traffic while prioritizing critical traffic. The state of practice poses challenges since architects must precisely encode their intent into formal optimization models using abstract notions such as utility functions, and ad-hoc manually tuned knobs. In this paper, we present the first effort to synthesize optimal network designs with indeterminate objectives using an interactive program-synthesis-based approach. We make three contributions. First, we present comparative synthesis, an interactive synthesis framework which produces near-optimal programs (network designs) through two kinds of queries (Validate and Compare), without an objective explicitly given. Second, we develop the first learning algorithm for comparative synthesis in which a voting-guided learner picks the most informative query in each iteration. We present theoretical analysis of the convergence rate of the algorithm. Third, we implemented Net10Q, a system based on our approach, and demonstrate its effectiveness on four real-world network case studies using black-box oracles and simulation experiments, as well as a pilot user study comprising network researchers and practitioners. Both theoretical and experimental results show the promise of our approach.
@article{paperbot2057,
title = {Comparative Synthesis: Learning Near-Optimal Network Designs by Query},
author = {Yanjun Wang and Zixuan Li and Chuan Jiang and Xiaokang Qiu and Sanjay Rao},
journal = {Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages},
volume = {7},
number = {POPL},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.1145/3571197}
}