Everyone in SDN Contributes: Fault Localization via Well-Designed Rules

Abstract

Probing techniques are widely used to identify faulty nodes in networks. Existing probe-based solutions for SDN fault localizationcan focus on two ways: per-rule and per-path. Both promote some certain switches to reporters by installing on them report rules. To avoid hindering other test packets, such report rules must vary between tests or be deleted before a next test, thus incurring excessive consumption on either TCAM resources of switches or bandwidth reserved for control messages. In this paper we present Voyager, a hybrid fault localization solution for SDN that fully combines the advantages of per-rule and per-path tests. Voyager significantly reduces the number of report rules and allows them to reside and function in switches persistently. With only one well-designed report rule for each switch installed, Voyager pinpoints faulty switches easily and tightly by sending test packets straight. Tests in Voyager are parallelizable and report rules are non-invasive. The performance evaluation on realistic datasets shows that Voyager is 24.0% to 92.3% faster than existing solutions.