FlowChecker: configuration analysis and verification of federated openflow infrastructures

  • Authors:

  • Ehab Al-Shaer;Saeed Al-Haj

  • Affiliations:

  • University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA;University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 3rd ACM workshop on Assurable and usable security configuration
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

It is difficult to build a real network to test novel experiments. OpenFlow makes it easier for researchers to run their own experiments by providing a virtual slice and configuration on real networks. Multiple users can share the same network by assigning a different slice for each one. Users are given the responsibility to maintain and use their own slice by writing rules in a FlowTable. Misconfiguration problems can arise when a user writes conflicting rules for single FlowTable or even within a path of multiple OpenFlow switches that need multiple FlowTables to be maintained at the same time. In this work, we describe a tool, FlowChecker, to identify any intra-switch misconfiguration within a single FlowTable. We also describe the inter-switch or inter-federated inconsistencies in a path of OpenFlow switches across the same or different OpenFlow infrastructures. FlowChecker encodes FlowTables configuration using Binary Decision Diagrams and then uses the model checker technique to model the inter-connected network of OpenFlow switches.