ShadowNet: a platform for rapid and safe network evolution

  • Authors:

  • Xu Chen;Z. Morley Mao;Jacobus Van Der Merwe

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Michigan;AT&T Labs-Research;AT&T Labs-Research

  • Venue:
  • USENIX'09 Proceedings of the 2009 conference on USENIX Annual technical conference
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

The ability to rapidly deploy new network services, service features and operational tools, without impacting existing services, is a significant challenge for all service providers. In this paper we address this problem by the introduction of a platform called ShadowNet. ShadowNet exploits the strong separation provided by modern computing and network equipment between logical functionality and physical infrastructure. It allows logical topologies of computing servers, network equipment and links to be dynamically created, and then instantiated to and managed on the physical infrastructure. ShadowNet is a sharable, programmable and composable infrastructure, consisting of carrier-grade equipment. Furthermore, it is a fully operational network that is connected to, but functionally separate from the provider production network. By exploiting the strong separation support, ShadowNet allows multiple technology and service trials to be executed in parallel in a realistic operational setting, without impacting the production network. In this paper, we describe the ShadowNet architecture and the control framework designed for its operation and illustrate the utility of the platform. We present our prototype implementation and demonstrate the effectiveness of the platform through extensive evaluation.