Configuration errors are viewed as a single big source of unintended distributed network behavior. There are several neighbor device negotiation protocols defined and already available. These well-known protocols include the auto-negotiation protocol defined as part of IEEE 802.1u and Cisco's Dynamic Inter-Switch Link Protocol (DISL) or Dynamic Trunking Protocol (DTP). Similarly, multi-device configuration protocols like Cisco's Virtual Local Area Network Trunking Protocol (VTP) and IEEE's 802.1s Multiple Spanning Tree (MST) protocol provide an implementation whereby a set of devices belonging to a domain/region pick up a configuration change that is done on one of the devices.
These protocols are specific in nature and do not cover all possible configurations across neighbor devices or, in general, a sub-set of the network. Specific negotiation and configuration protocols are available, but, a generic scoping, negotiation, and configuration mechanism is not available.