SBIR Phase I: Dynamic Data-Plane Verification in Heterogeneous Networks

本工作的创新点是建立了一个网络行为自动验证平台。我们社会的每一个方面现在都与计算机网络（如互联网）的运作紧密交织在一起。 不幸的是，现代网络也非常复杂，导致各种各样的故障模式和中断。 这些错误给企业带来了非常高的成本，包括收入和客户的损失、违反HIPAA等法规的罚款、敏感信息的泄露以及企业形象的下降。 不存在通过验证网络范围的正确性来帮助操作员的自动化工具。 为了满足这一需求，Veriflow将建立一个系统，该系统可以真实的实时自动验证计算机网络的安全性和正确性，发现漏洞，并协助网络运营商确定其原因。Veriflow通过扫描网络，构建网络行为的形式模型，并使用自定义形式逻辑算法来自动推导网络是否包含故障。 Veriflow的算法是实时的，能够随着网络状态的发展不断检查网络，检测瞬时错误并发出即时警报，并可扩展到大型和高度动态的环境。Veriflow的工作的更广泛/商业影响将显着提高关键网络基础设施的可靠性和安全性，并简化网络管理任务。我们的工具强大的正式基础，加上其高速和先进的扩展特性，将使我们能够在这个新兴市场中占据重要地位。该公司过去的研究已经通过两个工作原型证明了该系统的潜力，这些原型在为70，000多台机器提供服务的园区部署中发现了23个真实的错误，并在一毫秒内执行实时网络范围的验证。Veriflow的工作将产生新的工具和实现，Veriflow将免费提供给非商业用途。Veriflow还希望这项工作将有助于实现跨正式方法和网络的跨学科研究，共同目标是实现高度可用的网络基础设施。Veriflow将与伊利诺伊大学CITES集团合作，在他们的校园网络和Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband（UC 2B）网络中部署该系统，这是一个社区宽带项目，为2700个服务不足的住宅和350个社区锚机构提供千兆光纤到户。Veriflow还与几家大公司建立了工作关系，这些公司为大量用户群体提供服务，并为学术和研究机构提供服务。

The innovation of this work is a platform for automatic verification of network behavior. Every aspect of our society is now tightly intertwined with the functioning of computer networks such as the Internet. Unfortunately, modern networks are also extremely complex, leading to a rich variety of failure modes and outages. These errors have very high costs for businesses, including lost revenue and customers, fines from violating regulations such as HIPAA, leaks of sensitive information, and decline in corporate image. Automated tools to help operators by verifying network-wide correctness do not exist. To address this need, Veriflow will build a system, which automatically verifies security and correctness of computer networks in real time, discovers vulnerabilities, and assists network operators in determining their cause. Veriflow functions by scanning a network, constructing a formal model of the network's behavior, and using custom formal logic algorithms to automatically derive whether the network contains faults. Veriflow's algorithms are real-time, able to vet networks continuously as the network state evolves, detect transient errors and signal immediate alarms, and scale to large and highly dynamic environments.The broader/commercial impact of Veriflow's work will significantly enhance reliability and security of critical network infrastructure, and ease network management tasks. The strong formal foundations of our tool coupled with its high-speed and advanced scaling properties will enable us to gain an important part of this emerging market. The company's past research has demonstrated potential of the system through two working prototypes, which have found 23 real bugs in a campus deployment serving over 70,000 machines, and perform real-time network-wide verification within one millisecond. Veriflow's work will produce new tools and implementations which Veriflow will make freely available for non-commercial use. Veriflow also hopes this work will serve towards enabling interdisciplinary research across formal methods and networking, with the common goal of enabling highly available networking infrastructures. Veriflow will work with the University of Illinois CITES group to deploy the system in their campus network, and in the Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband (UC2B) network, a community broadband project to provide gigabit fiber-to-the-premise to 2700 under-served residences and 350 community anchor institutions. Veriflow has also established working relationships with several large companies that serve large user populations as well as provide outreach to academic and research institutions.