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A characterisation of verification tools for software defined networks

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Abstract

Software-defined networking (SDN) is a new paradigm to introduce intelligence in communication networks through centralised programming. SDN separates data and control plane with two main components, the programmable switches (data plane) and the central controller where network applications are executed. This highly programmable and flexible network introduces many challenges from the point of view of reliability (or robustness), and operators need to ensure the same level of confidence as in previous less flexible deployments. This paper provides a first study of the current verification tools used to analyse different properties of SDNs before deployment and/or during the exploitation of the network. Most of these tools offer some kind of automatic verification, supported by algorithms based on formal methods, but they do not differentiate between fixed and mobile/wireless networks. In the paper, we provide a number of classifications of the tools to make this selection easier for potential users, and we also identify promising research areas where more effort needs to be made.

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Notes

  1. NICE is available at https://code.google.com/archive/p/nice-of/.

  2. Hassel is available at https://bitbucket.org/peymank/hassel-public/src.

  3. The implementation and invariant examples are available online at http://people.csail.mit.edu/shachari/.

  4. The prototype tool can be found at https://github.com/nsg-ethz/SDNRacer

  5. Ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) is a fast associative memory which is very common and useful in switches for building IP routing tables.

  6. Frenetic family languages and the repository are available at http://www.frenetic-lang.org/.

  7. Kinetic tool is available at http://kinetic.noise.gatech.edu/.

  8. NetCore code can be downloaded from https://github.com/frenetic-lang/netcore-1.0.

  9. The lastest version of FlowLog is available at http://cs.brown.edu/research/plt/dl/flowlog/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Andalucía Tech, Dept. Lenguajes y Ciencias de la Computación, Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain

    Leticia Lavado, Laura Panizo, María-del-Mar Gallardo & Pedro Merino

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  1. Leticia Lavado
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  2. Laura Panizo
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Correspondence to Leticia Lavado.

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This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Project TIN2015-67083-R.

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Lavado, L., Panizo, L., Gallardo, MdM. et al. A characterisation of verification tools for software defined networks. J Reliable Intell Environ 3, 189–207 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40860-017-0045-y

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