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It is notoriously difficult to verify that a network is behaving as intended, especially at scale. This paper presents Hydra, a system that uses ideas from runtime verification to check that every packet is correctly processed with respect to a specification in real time. We propose a domain-specific language for writing properties, called Indus, and we develop a compiler that turns properties thus specified into executable P4 code that runs alongside the forwarding code at line rate. To evaluate our approach, we used Indus to model a range of properties, showing that it is expressive enough to capture examples studied in prior work. We also deployed Hydra checkers for validating paths in source routing and for enforcing slice isolation in Aether, an open-source cellular platform. We confirmed a subtle bug in Aether's 5G mobile core that would have been hard to detect using static techniques. We also evaluated the overheads of Hydra on hardware, finding that it does not significantly increase latency and often does not require additional pipeline stages.more » « less
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Network management often relies on machine learning to make predictions about performance and security from network traffic. Often, the representation of the traffic is as important as the choice of the model. The features that the model relies on, and the representation of those features, ultimately determine model accuracy, as well as where and whether the model can be deployed in practice. Thus, the design and evaluation of these models ultimately requires understanding not only model accuracy but also the systems costs associated with deploying the model in an operational network. Towards this goal, this paper develops a new framework and system that enables a joint evaluation of both the conventional notions of machine learning performance (e.g., model accuracy) and the systems-level costs of different representations of network traffic. We highlight these two dimensions for two practical network management tasks, video streaming quality inference and malware detection, to demonstrate the importance of exploring different representations to find the appropriate operating point. We demonstrate the benefit of exploring a range of representations of network traffic and present Traffic Refinery, a proof-of-concept implementation that both monitors network traffic at 10~Gbps and transforms traffic in real time to produce a variety of feature representations for machine learning. Traffic Refinery both highlights this design space and makes it possible to explore different representations for learning, balancing systems costs related to feature extraction and model training against model accuracy.more » « less
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null (Ed.)Many promising networking research ideas in programmable networks never see the light of day. Yet, deploying research prototypes in production networks can help validate research ideas, improve them with faster feedback, uncover new research questions, and also ease the subsequent transition to practice. In this paper, we show how researchers can run and validate their research ideas in their own backyards---on their production campus networks---and we have seen that such a demonstrator can expedite the deployment of a research idea in practice to solve real network operation problems. We present P4Campus , a proof-of-concept that encompasses tools, an infrastructure design, strategies, and best practices---both technical and non-technical---that can help researchers run experiments against their programmable network idea in their own network. We use network tapping devices, packet brokers, and commodity programmable switches to enable running experiments to evaluate research ideas on a production campus network. We present several compelling data-plane applications as use cases that run on our campus and solve production network problems. By sharing our experiences and open-sourcing our P4 apps [28], we hope to encourage similar efforts on other campuses.more » « less