Network Self-Configuration based on Fine-Tuned Small Language Models

Abstract: As modern networks grow in scale and complexity, manual configuration becomes increasingly inefficient and prone to human error. While intent-driven self-configuration using LLMs has shown significant promise, such models remain computationally expensive, resource-intensive, and often raise privacy concerns because they typically rely on external cloud infrastructure. This work introduces SLM_netconfig, a fine-tuned small LLM framework that uses an agent-based architecture and parameter-efficient adaptation techniques to translate configuration intents expressed as natural language requirements or questions into syntactically and semantically valid network configurations. The system is trained on a domain-specific dataset generated through a pipeline derived from vendor documentation, ensuring strong alignment with real-world configuration practices. Extensive evaluation shows that SLM_netconfig, when using its question-to-configuration model, achieves higher syntactic accuracy and goal accuracy than LLM-NetCFG while substantially reducing translation latency and producing concise, interpretable configurations. These results demonstrate that fine-tuned small LLMs, as implemented in SLM_netconfig, can deliver efficient, accurate, and privacy-preserving automated configuration generation entirely on-premise, making them a practical and scalable solution for modern autonomous network configuration.