Improving network delay predictions using GNNs

Autonomous network management is crucial for Fifth Generation (5G) and Beyond 5G (B5G) networks, where a constantly changing environment is expected and network configuration must adapt accordingly. Modeling tools are required to predict the impact on performance (packet and delay loss) when new traffic demands arrives and when changes in routing paths are applied in the network. Mathematical analysis and network simulators are techniques for modeling networks but both have limitations, as the former provides low accuracy and the latter requires high execution times. To overcome these limitations, Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, and more specifically, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), are proposed for network modeling due to their ability to capture complex relationships from graph-like data while predicting network properties with high accuracy and low computational requirements. However, one of the main issues when using GNNs is their lack of generalization capability to larger networks, i.e., when trained in small networks (in number of nodes, paths length, links capacity), the accuracy of predictions on larger networks is poor. This paper addresses the GNN generalization problem by the use of fundamental networking concepts. Our solution is built from a baseline GNN model called RouteNet (developed by Barcelona Neural Networking Center - Universitat Polit`ecnica de Catalunya (BNN-UPC)) that predicts the average delay in network paths, and through a number of simple additions significantly improves the prediction accuracy in larger networks. The improvement ratio compared to the baseline model is 101, from a 187.28% to a 1.828%, measured by the Mean Average Percentage Error (MAPE). In addition, we propose a closed-loop control context where the resulting GNN model could be potentially used in different use cases