Thinking inside the Box: Differential fault localization for SDN control plane

Xing Li, Yinbo Yu, Kai Bu, Yan Chen, Jianfeng Yang*, Ruijie Quan

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

The control plane of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is the key component that oversees and manages networks. However, involving design or logic flaws in its policy enforcement and network control is inevitable, which can cause it to behave incorrectly and induce network anomalies. Unfortunately, existing approaches mainly focus on policy verification or fault troubleshooting with little fault localization capability for repairing these flaws in production environments. In this paper, we present FALCON, the first FAult Localization tool for SDN CONtrol plane. We design a novel causal inference mechanism based on differential checking, which symmetrically compares two system behaviors with similar processes and identifies the causality in related code execution paths with concrete contexts to explain why a fault happened in the SDN network. Our main contributions include 1) a lightweight rule-based dynamic tracing mechanism for recording system behaviors of the SDN control plane, 2) a context-aware modeling mechanism for modeling these behaviors, and 3) a differential checking mechanism for localizing controller faults according to formulated symptoms. Our evaluation shows that FALCON is capable of localizing faults in SDN control plane with low overhead on performance.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages353-359
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9783903176157
StatePublished - May 16 2019
Event2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019 - Arlington, United States
Duration: Apr 8 2019Apr 12 2019

Publication series

Name2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019

Conference

Conference2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityArlington
Period4/8/194/12/19

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Information Systems and Management
  • Management Science and Operations Research
  • Information Systems
  • Computer Networks and Communications

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