Stick to the script: Monitoring the policy compliance of SDN data plane

  • Peng Zhang
  • , Hao Li
  • , Chengchen Hu
  • , Liujia Hu
  • , Lei Xiong

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Software defined networks provide new opportunities for automating the process of network debugging. Many tools have been developed to verify the correctness of network configurations on the control plane. However, due to software bugs and hardware faults of switches, the correctness of control plane may not readily translate into that of data plane. To bridge this gap, we present VeriDP, which can monitor "whether actual forwarding behaviors are complying with network configurations". Given that policies are well-configured, operators can leverage VeriDP to monitor the correctness of the network data plane. In a nutshell, VeriDP lets switches tag packets that they forward, and report tags together with headers to the verification server before the packets leave the network. The verification server pre-computes all header-to-tag mappings based on the configuration, and checks whether the reported tags agree with the mappings. We prototype VeriDP with both software and hardware OpenFlow switches, and use emulation to show that VeriDP can detect common data plane fault including black holes and access violations, with a minimal impact on the data plane.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationANCS 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages81-86
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781450341837
DOIs
StatePublished - 17 Mar 2016
Event12th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, ANCS 2016 - Santa Clara, United States
Duration: 17 Mar 201618 Mar 2016

Publication series

NameANCS 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems

Conference

Conference12th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, ANCS 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySanta Clara
Period17/03/1618/03/16

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