Work

Computing Precise Control Interface Specifications

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Verifying network programs is challenging because of how they divide labor: the control plane computes high level routes through the network and compiles them to device configurations, while the data plane uses these configurations to realize the desired forwarding behavior. In practice, the correctness of the data plane often assumes that the configurations generated by the control plane will satisfy complex specifications. Consequently, validation tools such as program verifiers, runtime monitors, fuzzers, and test-case generators must be aware of these control interface specifications (ci-specs) to avoid raising false alarms. In this paper, we propose the first algorithm for computing precise ci-specs for network data planes. Our specifications are designed to be efficiently monitorable —concretely, checking that a fixed configuration satisfies a ci-spec can be done in polynomial time. Our algorithm, based on modular program instrumentation, quantifier elimination, and a path-based analysis, is more expressive than prior work, and is applicable to practical network programs. We describe an implementation and show that ci-specs computed by our tool are useful for finding real bugs in real-world data plane programs.

Source: Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

DOI: 10.1145/3689743

Authors: Eric Hayden Campbell, Hossein Hojjat, Nate Foster

Institution: Cornell University

Language: English

Topic: Logic, programming, and type systems

Subfield: Artificial Intelligence

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funders: National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Awards: FMitF: Track I: Petr4: Formal Foundations for Programmable Networks, G8272031499