Verifying forwarding plane connectivity and locating link failures using static rules in software defined networks

Abstract

We present efficient solutions that install static rules on the forwarding elements such that network controllers use these rules to verify topology connectivity and locate link failures. For a forwarding plane with |E| links, we verify topology connectivity using ≤ 2|E| static rules and one control message. We guarantee locating at least one link failure using ≤ 6|E| static rules and θ(log(|E|)) control messages. We can also detect multiple link failures in a probabilistic sense. © 2013 ACM.