Merlin

Merlin provides techniques for verifying that both the partitioned program components and the delegated sub-policies conform to the global network policy. Overall, Merlin simplifies the task of network administration by providing high-level abstractions for specifying network policies and scalable infrastructure for enforcing them.

Merlin is a new network management framework that allows administrators to express policies in a high-level, declarative language based on regular expressions. The compiler automatically partitions those policies into components that can be placed on a variety of devices including switches, middleboxes, and end hosts. The compiler uses a constraint-solver to determine the optimal placement strategy using paramaterizable heuristics. Sub-policies may be further constrained by network tenants, facilitating management of federated networks.

Building Merlin

Merlin must currently be built from source. Merlin is written in OCaml and uses the [OCaml Package Manager (OPAM)][https://opam.ocaml.org/] to install dependencies. It is also dependent on DPRLE and Frenetic which must be built from source.

Dependencies

First install OPAM using the instructions for your operating system. Then, set up a proper OCaml environment by running the following commands:

opam init
eval `opam config env`
opam switch install 4.03.0
eval `opam config env`

In order to compile Merlin, you will need to install the relevant dependencies via OPAM using the following command. These are the combined dependencies for Merlin, Frenetic and DPRLE (described below):

opam install ocamlfind oasis core fieldslib cmdliner cstruct \
     async_extended async_parallel \
     menhir sexplib sedlex ppx_import \
     ulex ipaddr tcpip base64 cohttp \
     yojson mparser ocamlgraph quickcheck ounit

You will also need to install DPRLE and Frenetic from source.

To install DPRLE:

git clone https://github.com/frenetic-lang/dprle.git
cd dprle
make
make install

To install Frenetic:

git clone https://github.com/frenetic-lang/frenetic.git
cd frenetic
make
make install

Finally, you will need to install the Gurobi Optimizer:

• http://www.gurobi.com/index

Building

1. Run 'make`
2. Run 'make test'

Example

$ ./Merlin.native -topo examples/min/min.dot examples/min/min.mln -verbose