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Main Authors: Dinh, Lam, Quang, Pham Tran Anh, Leguay, Jérémie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05525
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author Dinh, Lam
Quang, Pham Tran Anh
Leguay, Jérémie
author_facet Dinh, Lam
Quang, Pham Tran Anh
Leguay, Jérémie
contents Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms have recently made significant strides in improving network performance. Nonetheless, their practical use is still limited in the absence of safe exploration and safe decision-making. In the context of commercial solutions, reliable and safe-to-operate systems are of paramount importance. Taking this problem into account, we propose a safe learning-based load balancing algorithm for Software Defined-Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), which is empowered by Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) combined with a Control Barrier Function (CBF). It safely projects unsafe actions into feasible ones during both training and testing, and it guides learning towards safe policies. We successfully implemented the solution on GPU to accelerate training by approximately 110x times and achieve model updates for on-policy methods within a few seconds, making the solution practical. We show that our approach delivers near-optimal Quality-of-Service (QoS performance in terms of end-to-end delay while respecting safety requirements related to link capacity constraints. We also demonstrated that on-policy learning based on Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) performs better than off-policy learning with Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) when both are combined with a CBF for safe load balancing.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_05525
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Safe Load Balancing based on Control Barrier Functions and Deep Reinforcement Learning
Dinh, Lam
Quang, Pham Tran Anh
Leguay, Jérémie
Networking and Internet Architecture
Machine Learning
Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms have recently made significant strides in improving network performance. Nonetheless, their practical use is still limited in the absence of safe exploration and safe decision-making. In the context of commercial solutions, reliable and safe-to-operate systems are of paramount importance. Taking this problem into account, we propose a safe learning-based load balancing algorithm for Software Defined-Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), which is empowered by Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) combined with a Control Barrier Function (CBF). It safely projects unsafe actions into feasible ones during both training and testing, and it guides learning towards safe policies. We successfully implemented the solution on GPU to accelerate training by approximately 110x times and achieve model updates for on-policy methods within a few seconds, making the solution practical. We show that our approach delivers near-optimal Quality-of-Service (QoS performance in terms of end-to-end delay while respecting safety requirements related to link capacity constraints. We also demonstrated that on-policy learning based on Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) performs better than off-policy learning with Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) when both are combined with a CBF for safe load balancing.
title Towards Safe Load Balancing based on Control Barrier Functions and Deep Reinforcement Learning
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05525