Year: 2017
Type: preprint
Abstract: We tackle the problem of deciding whether two probabilistic programs are equivalent in Probabilistic NetKAT, a formal language for specifying and reasoning about the behavior of packet-switched networks. We show that the problem is decidable for the history-free fragment of the language by developing an effective decision procedure based on stochastic matrices. The main challenge lies in reasoning about iteration, which we address by designing an encoding of the program semantics as a finite-state absorbing Markov chain, whose limiting distribution can be computed exactly. In an extended case study on a real-world data center network, we automatically verify various quantitative properties of interest, including resilience in the presence of failures, by analyzing the Markov chain semantics.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Smolka, Steffen, Kumar, Praveen, Foster, Nate, Hsu, Justin, Kahn, David, Kozen, Dexter, Silva, Alexandra
Institutions: Cornell University, University College London
Language: English
Subfield: Computational Theory and Mathematics
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2796352402