skip to main content
article
Public Access

Network configuration synthesis with abstract topologies

Published:14 June 2017Publication History
Skip Abstract Section

Abstract

We develop Propane/AT, a system to synthesize provably-correct BGP (border gateway protocol) configurations for large, evolving networks from high-level specifications of topology, routing policy, and fault-tolerance requirements. Propane/AT is based on new abstractions for capturing parameterized network topologies and their evolution, and algorithms to analyze the impact of topology and routing policy on fault tolerance. Our algorithms operate entirely on abstract topologies. We prove that the properties established by our analyses hold for every concrete instantiation of the given abstract topology. Propane/AT also guarantees that only incremental changes to existing device configurations are required when the network evolves to add or remove devices and links. Our experiments with real-world topologies and policies show that our abstractions and algorithms are effective, and that, for large networks, Propane/AT synthesizes configurations two orders of magnitude faster than systems that operate on concrete topologies.

Skip Supplemental Material Section

Supplemental Material

References

  1. News and press — BGPMon. http://www.bgpmon. net/news-and-events/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  2. J. H. Ahn, N. Binkert, A. Davis, M. McLaren, and R. S. Schreiber. HyperX: Topology, routing, and packaging of efficient large-scale networks. In SC, November 2009. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  3. M. Al-Fares, A. Loukissas, and A. Vahdat. A scalable, commodity data center network architecture. In SIGCOMM, August 2008. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  4. A. Andreyev. Introducing data center fabric, the nextgeneration facebook data center network. https:// code.facebook.com/posts/360346274145943/, November 2014.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  5. R. Beckett, R. Mahajan, T. Millstein, J. Padhye, and D. Walker. Don’t mind the gap: Bridging network-wide objectives and device-level configurations. In SIGCOMM, 2016. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  6. N. Bjørner, A.-D. Phan, and L. Fleckenstein. νZ - An Optimizing SMT Solver, pages 194–199. 2015.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. M. Casado, T. Koponen, R. Ramanathan, and S. Shenker. Virtualizing the network forwarding plane. In PRESTO, pages 8:1–8:6, 2010. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  8. A. El-Hassany, P. Tsankov, L. Vanbever, and M. Vechev. Network-wide configuration synthesis. https://arxiv. org/abs/1611.02537, November 2016.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  9. S. K. Fayaz, T. Sharma, A. Fogel, R. Mahajan, T. Millstein, V. Sekar, and G. Varghese. Efficient network reachability analysis using a succinct control plane representation. In OSDI, 2016. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  10. N. Feamster and H. Balakrishnan. Detecting BGP configuration faults with static analysis. In NSDI, May 2005. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  11. A. Fogel, S. Fung, L. Pedrosa, M. Walraed-Sullivan, R. Govindan, R. Mahajan, and T. Millstein. A general approach to network configuration analysis. In NSDI, March 2015. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  12. N. Foster, D. Kozen, M. Milano, A. Silva, and L. Thompson. A coalgebraic decision procedure for netkat. In POPL, pages 343–355, January 2015. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  13. L. Gao and J. Rexford. Stable internet routing without global coordination. In SIGMETRICS, pages 307–317, June 2000. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  14. A. Gember-Jacobson, R. Viswanathan, A. Akella, and R. Mahajan. Fast control plane analysis using an abstract representation. In SIGCOMM, August 2016. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  15. P. Gill, N. Jain, and N. Nagappan. Understanding network failures in data centers: Measurement, analysis, and implications. In SIGCOMM, August 2011. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  16. A. Greenberg, J. R. Hamilton, N. Jain, S. Kandula, C. Kim, P. Lahiri, D. A. Maltz, P. Patel, and S. Sengupta. VL2: A scalable and flexible data center network. In SIGCOMM, pages 51–62, October 2009. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  17. C. Guo, H. Wu, K. Tan, L. Shi, Y. Zhang, and S. Lu. Dcell: A scalable and fault-tolerant network structure for data centers. In SIGCOMM, pages 75–86, October 2008. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  18. C. Guo, G. Lu, D. Li, H. Wu, X. Zhang, Y. Shi, C. Tian, Y. Zhang, and S. Lu. BCube: A high performance, servercentric network architecture for modular data centers. In SIGCOMM, pages 63–74, October 2009. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  19. hatch. Hatch – create and share configurations. http: //www.hatchconfigs.com/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  20. P. Kazemian, G. Varghese, and N. McKeown. Header space analysis: Static checking for networks. In NSDI, April 2012. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  21. Z. Kerravala. What is behind network downtime? proactive steps to reduce human error and improve availability of networks. https://www.cs.princeton.edu/ courses/archive/fall10/cos561/papers/ Yankee04.pdf, January 2004.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  22. A. Khurshid, X. Zou, W. Zhou, M. Caesar, and P. B. Godfrey. Veriflow: Verifying network-wide invariants in real time. In NSDI, pages 15–27, April 2013. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  23. J. Kim, W. J. Dally, and D. Abts. Flattened butterfly: A costefficient topology for high-radix networks. In ISCA, pages 126–137, May 2007. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  24. F. Le, G. G. Xie, and H. Zhang. On route aggregation. In CoNEXT, December 2011. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  25. V. Liu, D. Halperin, A. Krishnamurthy, and T. Anderson. F10: A fault-tolerant engineered network. In NSDI, pages 399–412, April 2013. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  26. R. Mahajan, D. Wetherall, and T. Anderson. Understanding BGP misconfiguration. In SIGCOMM, August 2002. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  27. H. Mai, A. Khurshid, R. Agarwal, M. Caesar, P. B. Godfrey, and S. T. King. Debugging the data plane with anteater. In SIGCOMM, pages 290–301, August 2011. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  28. S. Narain, G. Levin, S. Malik, and V. Kaul. Declarative infrastructure configuration synthesis and debugging. Journal of Network Systems Management, 16(3):235–258, October 2008. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  29. J. Networks. As the value of enterprise networks escalates, so does the need for configuration management. https://www-935.ibm.com/services/au/ gts/pdf/200249.pdf, May 2008.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  30. Quagga. Quagga routing suite. http://www.nongnu. org/quagga/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  31. M. Reitblatt, M. Canini, N. Foster, and A. Guha. FatTire: Declarative fault tolerance for software defined networks. In HotSDN, August 2013. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  32. S. Saha, S. Prabhu, and P. Madhusudan. Netgen: Synthesizing data-plane configurations for network policies. In SOSR, pages 17:1–17:6, June 2015. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  33. B. Schlinker, R. N. Mysore, S. Smith, J. C. Mogul, A. Vahdat, M. Yu, E. Katz-Bassett, and M. Rubin. Condor: Better topologies through declarative design. In SIGCOMM, pages 449–463, August 2015. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  34. R. Soulé, S. Basu, P. J. Marandi, F. Pedone, R. Kleinberg, E. G. Sirer, and N. Foster. Merlin: A language for provisioning network resources. In CoNEXT, December 2014. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  35. thwack. configuration templates — thwack. https: //thwack.solarwinds.com/search.jspa?q= configuration+templates.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  36. K. Weitz, D. Woos, E. Torlak, M. D. Ernst, A. Krishnamurthy, and Z. Tatlock. Formal semantics and automated verification for the border gateway protocol. In NetPL, March 2016.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Index Terms

  1. Network configuration synthesis with abstract topologies

        Recommendations

        Comments

        Login options

        Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

        Sign in

        Full Access

        PDF Format

        View or Download as a PDF file.

        PDF

        eReader

        View online with eReader.

        eReader
        About Cookies On This Site

        We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.

        Learn more

        Got it!