A Tunnel-aware Language for Network Packet Filtering

Abstract—While in computer networks the number of possible protocol encapsulations is growing day after day, network administrators face ever increasing difficulties in selecting accurately the traffic they need to inspect. This is mainly caused by the limited number of encapsulations supported by currently available tools and the difficulty to exactly specify which packets have to be analyzed, especially in presence of tunneled traffic. This paper presents a novel packet processing language that, besides Boolean filtering predicates, introduces special constructs for handling the more complex situations of tunneled and stacked encapsulations, giving the user a finer control over the semantics of a filtering expression. Even though this language is principally focused on packet filters, it is designed to support other advanced packet processing mechanisms such as traffic classification and field extraction. I

Arbitrary Packet Matching in OpenFlow

OpenFlow has emerged as the de facto control protocol to implement Software-Defined Networking (SDN). In its current form, the protocol specifies a set of fields on which it matches packets to perform actions, such as forwarding, discarding or modifying specific protocol header fields at a switch. The number of match fields has increased with every version of the protocol to extend matching capabilities, however, it is still not flexible enough to match on arbitrary packet fields which limits innovation and new protocol development with OpenFlow. In this paper, we argue that a fully flexible match structure is superior to continuously extending the number of fields to match upon. We use Berkeley Packet Filters (BPF) for packet classification to provide a protocol-independent, flexible alternative to today’s OpenFlow fixed match fields. We have implemented a prototype system and evaluated the performance of the proposed match scheme, with a focus on the time it takes to execute and the memory required to store different match filter specifications. Our prototype implementation demonstrates that line-rate arbitrary packet classification can be achieved with complex BPF programs

NetPDL: An Extensible XML-Based Language for Packet Header Description

Although several applications need to know the format of network packets to perform their tasks, till now, each application uses its own packet description database. This paper addresses this problem by proposing the NetPDL, an XML-based language for describing packet headers, which has the potential of enabling the realization of a common, application-independent protocol description database that can be shared among several applications. Further, common functionalities related to the protocol database can be implemented in a library, which can be a basic building block for implementing networking applications

The Road to BOFUSS: The Basic OpenFlow User-space Software Switch

Software switches are pivotal in the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm, particularly in the early phases of development, deployment and testing. Currently, the most popular one is Open vSwitch (OVS), leveraged in many production-based environments. However, due to its kernel-based nature, OVS is typically complex to modify when additional features or adaptation is required. To this regard, a simpler user-space is key to perform these modifications. In this article, we present a rich overview of BOFUSS, the basic OpenFlow user-space software switch. BOFUSS has been widely used in the research community for diverse reasons, but it lacked a proper reference document. For this purpose, we describe the switch, its history, architecture, uses cases and evaluation, together with a survey of works that leverage this switch. The main goal is to provide a comprehensive overview of the switch and its characteristics. Although the original BOFUSS is not expected to surpass the high performance of OVS, it is a useful complementary artifact that provides some OpenFlow features missing in OVS and it can be easily modified for extended functionality. Moreover, enhancements provided by the BEBA project brought the performance from BOFUSS close to OVS. In any case, this paper sheds light to researchers looking for the trade-offs between performance and customization of BOFUSS.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures; submitted to Telecommunications Systems journa

The road to BOFUSS: The basic OpenFlow userspace software switch

Software switches are pivotal in the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm, particularly in the early phases of development, deployment and testing. Currently, the most popular one is Open vSwitch (OVS), leveraged in many production-based environments. However, due to its kernel-based nature, OVS is typically complex to modify when additional features or adaptation is required. To this regard, a simpler user-space is key to perform these modifications. In this article, we present a rich overview of BOFUSS, the basic OpenFlow user-space software switch. BOFUSS has been widely used in the research community for diverse reasons, but it lacked a proper reference document. For this purpose, we describe the switch, its history, architecture, uses cases and evaluation, together with a survey of works that leverage this switch. The main goal is to provide a comprehensive overview of the switch and its characteristics. Although the original BOFUSS is not expected to surpass the high performance of OVS, it is a useful complementary artefact that provides some OpenFlow features missing in OVS and it can be easily modified for extended functionality. Moreover, enhancements provided by the BEBA project brought the performance from BOFUSS close to OVS. In any case, this paper sheds light to researchers looking for the trade-offs between performance and customization of BOFUSS

A Review on Features’ Robustness in High Diversity Mobile Traffic Classifications

Mobile traffics are becoming more dominant due to growing usage of mobile devices and proliferation of IoT. The influx of mobile traffics introduce some new challenges in traffic classifications; namely the diversity complexity and behavioral dynamism complexity. Existing traffic classifications methods are designed for classifying standard protocols and user applications with more deterministic behaviors in small diversity. Currently, flow statistics, payload signature and heuristic traffic attributes are some of the most effective features used to discriminate traffic classes. In this paper, we investigate the correlations of these features to the less-deterministic user application traffic classes based on corresponding classification accuracy. Then, we evaluate the impact of large-scale classification on feature's robustness based on sign of diminishing accuracy. Our experimental results consolidate the needs for unsupervised feature learning to address the dynamism of mobile application behavioral traits for accurate classification on rapidly growing mobile traffics

User-friendly Formal Methods for Security-aware Applications and Protocols

Formal support in the design and implementation of security-aware applications increases the assurance in the final artifact. Formal methods techniques work by setting a model that unambiguously defines attacker capabilities, protocol parties behavior, and expected security properties. Rigorous reasoning can be done on the model about the interaction of the external attacker with the protocol parties, assessing whether the security properties hold or not. Unfortunately, formal verification requires a high level of expertise to be used properly and, in complex systems, the model analysis requires an amount of resources (memory and time) that are not available with current technologies. The aim of this thesis is to propose new interfaces and methodologies that facilitate the usage of formal verification techniques applied to security-aware protocols and distributed applications. In particular, this thesis presents: (i) Spi2JavaGUI, a framework for the model-driven development of security protocols, that combines (for the first time in literature) an intuitive user interface, automated formal verification and code generation; (ii) a new methodology that enables the model-driven development and the automated formal analysis of distributed applications, which requires less resources and formal verification knowledge to complete the verification process, when compared to previous approaches; (iii) the formal verification of handover procedures defined by the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard for mobile communication networks, including the results and all the translation rules from specification documents to formal models, that facilitates the application of formal verification to other parts of the standard in the future