English

Packet flow analysis in IP networks via abstract interpretation

Networking and Internet Architecture 2011-11-30 v1

Abstract

Static analysis (aka offline analysis) of a model of an IP network is useful for understanding, debugging, and verifying packet flow properties of the network. There have been static analysis approaches proposed in the literature for networks based on model checking as well as graph reachability. Abstract interpretation is a method that has typically been applied to static analysis of programs. We propose a new, abstract-interpretation based approach for analysis of networks. We formalize our approach, mention its correctness guarantee, and demonstrate its flexibility in addressing multiple network-analysis problems that have been previously solved via tailor-made approaches. Finally, we investigate an application of our analysis to a novel problem -- inferring a high-level policy for the network -- which has been addressed in the past only in the restricted single-router setting.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1111.6808,
  title  = {Packet flow analysis in IP networks via abstract interpretation},
  author = {Raghavan Komondoor and K. Vasanta Lakshmi and Deva P. Seetharam and Sudha Balodia},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1111.6808},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

8 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T19:43:15.042Z