research-article

SDNRacer: concurrency analysis for software-defined networks

Authors:

Ahmed El-Hassany,

Jeremie Miserez,

Laurent Vanbever,

Martin VechevAuthors Info & Claims

PLDI '16: Proceedings of the 37th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

Pages 402 - 415

https://doi.org/10.1145/2908080.2908124

Published: 02 June 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Concurrency violations are an important source of bugs in Software-Defined Networks (SDN), often leading to policy or invariant violations. Unfortunately, concurrency violations are also notoriously difficult to avoid, detect and debug. This paper presents a novel approach and a tool, SDNRacer, for detecting concurrency violations of SDNs. Our approach is enabled by three key ingredients: (i) a precise happens- before model for SDNs that captures when events can happen concurrently; (ii) a set of sound, domain-specific filters that reduce reported violations by orders of magnitude, and; (iii) a sound and complete dynamic analyzer, based on the above, that can ensure the network is free of harmful errors such as data races and per-packet incoherence. We evaluated SDNRacer on several real-world OpenFlow controllers, running both reactive and proactive applications in large networks. We show that SDNRacer is practically effective: it quickly pinpoints harmful concurrency violations without overwhelming the user with false positives.

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cover image ACM Conferences

PLDI '16: Proceedings of the 37th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

June 2016

726 pages

ISBN:9781450342612

DOI:10.1145/2908080

General Chair:
Chandra Krintz
University of California at Santa Barbara, USA
,
Program Chair:
Emery Berger
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 51, Issue 6
PLDI '16
June 2016
726 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/2980983
Editor:
Andy Gill
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

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Published: 02 June 2016

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PLDI '16: ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

June 13 - 17, 2016

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3605098.3636048
Kim JSeo MMarin ELee SNam JShin S(2024) Ambusher : Exploring the Security of Distributed SDN Controllers Through Protocol State Fuzzing IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security10.1109/TIFS.2024.340296719(6264-6279)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2024.3402967
Dai YZhang HWang JLiao JZhang P(2024)INCS: Intent-driven network-wide configuration synthesis based on deep reinforcement learningComputer Networks10.1016/j.comnet.2024.110640251(110640)Online publication date: Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2024.110640
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Albert EGómez-Zamalloa MIsabel MRubio ASammartino MSilva A(2020)Actor-Based Model Checking for Software-Defined NetworksJournal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming10.1016/j.jlamp.2020.100617(100617)Online publication date: Oct-2020
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