I'm skeptical of the data. What do you exactly mean? This list largely deals with stateless IP routers, and I am assuming this context. What are the 'operational intents' you refer to? Are they ACL rules, BGP policies? Because in either context, I don't believe 95% to be redundant for a moment, so I must be confused and you're talking about something entirely different. You're not going to receive any input, because no one knows what you're asking. On Fri, 3 Apr 2026 at 22:48, manwar--- via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Hello,
I am a PhD student currently looking at the long-term management of network policies and intents. In studying a large-scale production dataset from a service provider, I found that over 95% of the operational intents were semantically redundant (meaning they were completely shadowed or subsumed by broader, older rules).
I am trying to understand if this high level of policy bloat matches the actual experience of operators in the field:
Redundancy: Is cleaning up shadowed or redundant rules a regular part of your workflow, or do they just tend to stay in the system for years once they're active? Conflicts: How often do you run into cases where multiple goals (which all seem fine on their own) accidentally create a conflict when they are enforced together over the same traffic? Resolutions: Is there a standard way you "relax" or prioritize these goals when you find they are fighting each other?
Thank you for any operational insights you can share.
Best regards, Mubashir Anwar University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/3RJ45WJJ...
-- ++ytti