Selectively monitoring a network of network function chains based on probability of service level agreement violation

A system comprising at least a memory and a processor coupled to the memory, the processor executing instructions stored in the memory to:

• query for a result associated with a network function chain to verify whether a service performed by the network function chain complies with a Service Level Agreement (SLA);
• calculate a difference between an actual performance metric value and an expected performance metric value for a packet passing through a path in the network function chain based on the result;
• determine a probability of SLA violation in the path based on the calculated difference;
• and
• selectively monitor a network of network function chains by monitoring the path using a traffic counter in response to the probability of SLA violation being high.

A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium encoded with instructions executable by at least one processor of a network device, the machine-readable storage medium comprising instructions to:

• query a model for a result to verify whether a service performed by a network function chain complies with a Service Level Agreement (SLA);
• calculate a difference between an actual behavior and an expected behavior for a packet passing through a path in the network function chain based on the result;
• determine a probability of SLA violation that is negatively correlated to the difference between the actual behavior and the expected behavior;
• and
• assign the path to a hardware traffic counter at a node in the path for selectively monitoring a network of network function chains in response to the probability of SLA violation being high.