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

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

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

Computer Science

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

5 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 language	English (US)
Title of host publication	2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages	353-359
Number of pages	7
ISBN (Electronic)	9783903176157
State	Published - May 16 2019
Event	2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019 - Arlington, United States Duration: Apr 8 2019 → Apr 12 2019

Publication series

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

Conference

Conference	2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019
Country/Territory	United States
City	Arlington
Period	4/8/19 → 4/12/19

Funding

This work is supported by National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFB0801703) and the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province (2018C01088).

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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

Cite this

Li, X., Yu, Y., Bu, K., Chen, Y., Yang, J., & Quan, R. (2019). Thinking inside the Box: Differential fault localization for SDN control plane. In 2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019 (pp. 353-359). Article 8717815 (2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc..

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title = "Thinking inside the Box: Differential fault localization for SDN control plane",

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.",

author = "Xing Li and Yinbo Yu and Kai Bu and Yan Chen and Jianfeng Yang and Ruijie Quan",

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Li, X, Yu, Y, Bu, K, Chen, Y, Yang, J & Quan, R 2019, Thinking inside the Box: Differential fault localization for SDN control plane. in 2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019., 8717815, 2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., pp. 353-359, 2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019, Arlington, United States, 4/8/19.

Thinking inside the Box: Differential fault localization for SDN control plane. / Li, Xing; Yu, Yinbo; Bu, Kai et al.
2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2019. p. 353-359 8717815 (2019 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management, IM 2019).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

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

Abstract

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ASJC Scopus subject areas

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