A Survey on Network Verification and Testing With Formal Methods: Approaches and Challenges

• Published in: IEEE Communications surveys and tutorials Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 940 - 969
• Main Authors: Li, Yahui, Yin, Xia, Wang, Zhiliang, Yao, Jiangyuan, Shi, Xingang, Wu, Jianping, Zhang, Han, Wang, Qing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2019
• Subjects: Control systems; formal methods; network reliability; network testing; Network verification; Reliability; Routing protocols; Software; software-defined network; Testing
• DOI: 10.1109/COMST.2018.2868050

Networks have grown increasingly complicated. Violations of intended policies can compromise network availability and network reliability. Network operators need to ensure that their policies are correctly implemented. This has inspired a research field, network verification and testing, that enables users to automatically detect bugs and systematically reason their network. Furthermore, techniques ranging from formal modeling to verification and testing have been applied to help operators build reliable systems in electronic design automation and software. Inspired by its success, network verification has recently seen increased attention in the academic and industrial communities. As an area of current interest, it is an interdisciplinary subject (with fields including formal methods, mathematical logic, programming languages, and networks), making it daunting for a nonprofessional. We perform a comprehensive survey on well-developed methodologies and tools for data plane verification, control plane verification, data plane testing and control plane testing. This survey also provides lessons gained from existing solutions and a perspective of future research developments.