pWAN is a distributed, policy based, network configuration and management system. The overall goal of this architecture is to facilitate the management of heterogeneous networks spread over diverse administrative domains using policies defined in a simple, common language that is vendor and management protocol agnostic. Through this framework, network operators can easily specify network management and configuration policies which are then validated by the system for consistency, distributed throughout the network and enforced at the network devices. In addition, the framework provides the capabilities for monitoring activities within the network and initiating actions based on user specified policies.