NetCheck: Network Diagnoses from Blackbox Traces

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• Justin Cappos (NYU)
• Friday 03 October 2014, 15:00-16:00
• SS03, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Builiding.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Eiko Yoneki.

This talk introduces NetCheck, a tool to diagnose network problems in large and complex applications. NetCheck uses traces from existing blackbox tracing mechanisms, such as strace, to diagnose network problems in real world applications. NetCheck can diagnose faults without any specific information about the underlying network or application. NetCheck does this by (1) totally ordering the distributed set of input traces, and by (2) utilizing a network model to identify points in the totally ordered execution where the traces deviated from the behavior a programmer is likely to expect. The key insight in this work is to perform network problem diagnosis by understanding how the programmer expects the network to operate and look for differences in the observed behavior.

Our evaluation demonstrates that NetCheck is able to accurately diagnose failures without relying on any application- or network-specific information. For instance, NetCheck correctly identified the existence of NAT devices, simultaneous network disconnection/reconnection, and platform portability issues. In a more targeted evaluation, we have found that NetCheck correctly detects over 95% of the network problems reported in bug trackers of projects like Python, Apache, and Ruby. When applied to traces of faults observed by a network administrator in a live network, NetCheck identified the primary cause of the fault in 90% of the cases. NetCheck performs diagnosis efficiently and can process a GB-long trace in about 2 minutes.

Bio: Justin Cappos is an assistant professor in the Polytechnic School of Engineering at New York University. Justin’s research interests focus on understanding systems security problems by building and deploying systems. His dissertation work on package management has been adopted by popular Linux package managers, enhancing the security of millions of Linux servers worldwide. His Seattle testbed is the world’s largest academic testbed with thousands of installs, developers, and users. Due to the practical impact of his research, he was chosen as one of Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10” researchers under age 40.

This talk is part of the Computer Laboratory Systems Research Group Seminar series.

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