Finding hard-to-find data plane bugs with a PTA

Bugs in network hardware can cause tremendous problems. However, programmable network devices have the potential to provide greater visibility into the internal behavior of devices, allowing us to more quickly find and identify problems. In this paper, we provide a taxonomy of data plane bugs, and u...

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Main Authors: Bressana, P, Zilberman, N, Soulé, R
Format: Conference item
Language:English
Published: Association for Computing Machinery 2020
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author Bressana, P
Zilberman, N
Soulé, R
author_facet Bressana, P
Zilberman, N
Soulé, R
author_sort Bressana, P
collection OXFORD
description Bugs in network hardware can cause tremendous problems. However, programmable network devices have the potential to provide greater visibility into the internal behavior of devices, allowing us to more quickly find and identify problems. In this paper, we provide a taxonomy of data plane bugs, and use the taxonomy to derive a Portable Test Architecture (PTA) which offers essential abstractions for testing on a variety of network hardware devices. PTA is implemented with a novel data plane design that (i) separates target-specific from target-independent components, allowing for portability, and (ii) allows users to write a test program once at compile time, but dynamically alter the behavior via runtime configuration. We report 12 diverse bugs on different hardware targets, and their associated software, exposed using PTA.
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spelling oxford-uuid:63ff5749-7627-4d32-99dd-5b63071e810f2022-03-26T18:16:20ZFinding hard-to-find data plane bugs with a PTAConference itemhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_5794uuid:63ff5749-7627-4d32-99dd-5b63071e810fEnglishSymplectic ElementsAssociation for Computing Machinery2020Bressana, PZilberman, NSoulé, RBugs in network hardware can cause tremendous problems. However, programmable network devices have the potential to provide greater visibility into the internal behavior of devices, allowing us to more quickly find and identify problems. In this paper, we provide a taxonomy of data plane bugs, and use the taxonomy to derive a Portable Test Architecture (PTA) which offers essential abstractions for testing on a variety of network hardware devices. PTA is implemented with a novel data plane design that (i) separates target-specific from target-independent components, allowing for portability, and (ii) allows users to write a test program once at compile time, but dynamically alter the behavior via runtime configuration. We report 12 diverse bugs on different hardware targets, and their associated software, exposed using PTA.
spellingShingle Bressana, P
Zilberman, N
Soulé, R
Finding hard-to-find data plane bugs with a PTA
title Finding hard-to-find data plane bugs with a PTA
title_full Finding hard-to-find data plane bugs with a PTA
title_fullStr Finding hard-to-find data plane bugs with a PTA
title_full_unstemmed Finding hard-to-find data plane bugs with a PTA
title_short Finding hard-to-find data plane bugs with a PTA
title_sort finding hard to find data plane bugs with a pta
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