The behavior of a communications network depends on the configuration of hundreds to thousands of switches, routers, firewalls, and other devices. For example, a campus network may have as many as 2,000 inter-operating network devices and about one million lines of configuration; whether the network operates correctly depends for the most part on the configuration of these devices. Human configuration errors are the single biggest contributor to network downtime. This project seeks to develop techniques to make networks easier to manage by improving both configuration testing and synthesis. Testing takes as input an existing network configuration and determines whether the configuration is operating correctly. Synthesis generates configurations automatically. The project draws on two testing techniques to make network configurations easier to test: differential testing and dynamic testing. Differential testing generates test cases to characterize the run-time behavior of two different programs; analyzing differences in network-wide configurations can help testing by allowing test cases to focus on the smaller subset of configurations that change more frequently. Differential analysis may make testing more tractable by reducing the amount of configuration to test. Dynamic testing checks the correctness of a program by executing it; this execution can be performed in a parallel "shadow" network, for example. The expected results from this project include tools for network operators to test and automatically generate network-wide configurations for both enterprise and ISP networks. The tools will also be useful in graduate-level courses.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS)
Type
Standard Grant (Standard)
Application #
1018021
Program Officer
Darleen Fisher
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2010-09-01
Budget End
2015-08-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2010
Total Cost
$250,000
Indirect Cost
Name
Georgia Tech Research Corporation
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Atlanta
State
GA
Country
United States
Zip Code
30332