Don't mind the gap: Bridging network-wide objectives and device-level configurations

Ryan Beckett; Ratul Mahajan; Todd Millstein; Jitendra Padhye; David Walker

doi:10.1145/2934872.2934909

Don't mind the gap: Bridging network-wide objectives and device-level configurations

Ryan Beckett, Ratul Mahajan, Todd Millstein, Jitendra Padhye, David Walker

Computer Science

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

93 Scopus citations

Abstract

We develop Propane, a language and compiler to help network operators with a challenging, error-prone task - bridging the gap between network-wide routing objectives and low-level configurations of devices that run complex, distributed protocols. The language allows operators to specify their objectives naturally, using high-level constraints on both the shape and relative preference of traffic paths. The compiler automatically translates these specifications to router-level BGP configurations, using an effective intermediate representation that compactly encodes the flow of routing information along policy-compliant paths. It guarantees that the compiled configurations correctly implement the specified policy under all possible combinations of failures. We show that Propane can effectively express the policies of datacenter and backbone networks of a large cloud provider; and despite its strong guarantees, our compiler scales to networks with hundreds or thousands of routers.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	SIGCOMM 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages	328-341
Number of pages	14
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450341936
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/2934872.2934909
State	Published - Aug 22 2016
Event	2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication, SIGCOMM 2016 - Florianopolis, Brazil Duration: Aug 22 2016 → Aug 26 2016

Publication series

Name	SIGCOMM 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication

Other

Other	2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication, SIGCOMM 2016
Country/Territory	Brazil
City	Florianopolis
Period	8/22/16 → 8/26/16

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Communication
Computer Networks and Communications
Signal Processing

Keywords

BGP
Compilation
Distributed systems
Domain-specific language
Fault tolerance
Propane
Synthesis

Access to Document

10.1145/2934872.2934909

Cite this

Beckett, R., Mahajan, R., Millstein, T., Padhye, J., & Walker, D. (2016). Don't mind the gap: Bridging network-wide objectives and device-level configurations. In SIGCOMM 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication (pp. 328-341). Article 2934909 (SIGCOMM 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication). Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1145/2934872.2934909

Beckett, Ryan ; Mahajan, Ratul ; Millstein, Todd et al. / Don't mind the gap : Bridging network-wide objectives and device-level configurations. SIGCOMM 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2016. pp. 328-341 (SIGCOMM 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication).

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title = "Don't mind the gap: Bridging network-wide objectives and device-level configurations",

abstract = "We develop Propane, a language and compiler to help network operators with a challenging, error-prone task - bridging the gap between network-wide routing objectives and low-level configurations of devices that run complex, distributed protocols. The language allows operators to specify their objectives naturally, using high-level constraints on both the shape and relative preference of traffic paths. The compiler automatically translates these specifications to router-level BGP configurations, using an effective intermediate representation that compactly encodes the flow of routing information along policy-compliant paths. It guarantees that the compiled configurations correctly implement the specified policy under all possible combinations of failures. We show that Propane can effectively express the policies of datacenter and backbone networks of a large cloud provider; and despite its strong guarantees, our compiler scales to networks with hundreds or thousands of routers.",

keywords = "BGP, Compilation, Distributed systems, Domain-specific language, Fault tolerance, Propane, Synthesis",

author = "Ryan Beckett and Ratul Mahajan and Todd Millstein and Jitendra Padhye and David Walker",

note = "Funding Information: We thank R. Aditya, George Chen, and Lihua Yuan for feedback on the work and the SIGCOMM reviewers for comments on the paper. This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation awards CNS-1161595 and CNS-1111520 as well as a gift from Cisco. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2016 ACM.; 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication, SIGCOMM 2016 ; Conference date: 22-08-2016 Through 26-08-2016",

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Beckett, R, Mahajan, R, Millstein, T, Padhye, J & Walker, D 2016, Don't mind the gap: Bridging network-wide objectives and device-level configurations. in SIGCOMM 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication., 2934909, SIGCOMM 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, pp. 328-341, 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication, SIGCOMM 2016, Florianopolis, Brazil, 8/22/16. https://doi.org/10.1145/2934872.2934909

Don't mind the gap: Bridging network-wide objectives and device-level configurations. / Beckett, Ryan; Mahajan, Ratul; Millstein, Todd et al.
SIGCOMM 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2016. p. 328-341 2934909 (SIGCOMM 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

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N1 - Funding Information: We thank R. Aditya, George Chen, and Lihua Yuan for feedback on the work and the SIGCOMM reviewers for comments on the paper. This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation awards CNS-1161595 and CNS-1111520 as well as a gift from Cisco. Publisher Copyright: © 2016 ACM.

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N2 - We develop Propane, a language and compiler to help network operators with a challenging, error-prone task - bridging the gap between network-wide routing objectives and low-level configurations of devices that run complex, distributed protocols. The language allows operators to specify their objectives naturally, using high-level constraints on both the shape and relative preference of traffic paths. The compiler automatically translates these specifications to router-level BGP configurations, using an effective intermediate representation that compactly encodes the flow of routing information along policy-compliant paths. It guarantees that the compiled configurations correctly implement the specified policy under all possible combinations of failures. We show that Propane can effectively express the policies of datacenter and backbone networks of a large cloud provider; and despite its strong guarantees, our compiler scales to networks with hundreds or thousands of routers.

AB - We develop Propane, a language and compiler to help network operators with a challenging, error-prone task - bridging the gap between network-wide routing objectives and low-level configurations of devices that run complex, distributed protocols. The language allows operators to specify their objectives naturally, using high-level constraints on both the shape and relative preference of traffic paths. The compiler automatically translates these specifications to router-level BGP configurations, using an effective intermediate representation that compactly encodes the flow of routing information along policy-compliant paths. It guarantees that the compiled configurations correctly implement the specified policy under all possible combinations of failures. We show that Propane can effectively express the policies of datacenter and backbone networks of a large cloud provider; and despite its strong guarantees, our compiler scales to networks with hundreds or thousands of routers.

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Beckett R, Mahajan R, Millstein T, Padhye J, Walker D. Don't mind the gap: Bridging network-wide objectives and device-level configurations. In SIGCOMM 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. 2016. p. 328-341. 2934909. (SIGCOMM 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication). doi: 10.1145/2934872.2934909

Don't mind the gap: Bridging network-wide objectives and device-level configurations

Abstract

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All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Keywords

Access to Document

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