Thursday, April 21st – On the Practical Applicability of SDN Research (Roberto Di Lallo) – RoutingWatch: Visual Exploration and Analysis of Routing Events (Massimo Rimondini)

=== When ===
Thursday, April 21st at 2:30 PM

=== Where ===
Department of Engineering
Section of Computer Science and Automation
Via della Vasca Navale, 79
Meeting room (1.10) on 1st floor

________________________________________________________

SEMINAR #1

=== Title ===
On the Practical Applicability of SDN Research

=== Speaker ===
Roberto di Lallo
PhD Student in Computer Science and Automation
Roma Tre University
http://www.dia.uniroma3.it/~compunet/www/view/person.php?id=roberto

=== Abstract ===
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a de-facto established approach that separates
the packet switching functions of a device from its operational logic, which is
controlled by a piece of software. Due to its potential for realizing new network
architectures and services, a whole thread of scientific literature is devoted to
SDN and its most adopted incarnation, OpenFlow. However, limited attention has been
put in verifying the viability of the proposed approaches on currently available
hardware.
We address this deficiency through the following contributions: i) a critical review
of the literature about SDN in terms of applicability issues stemming from publicly
documented limitations of OpenFlow implementations; ii) a methodology for verifying
the support of SDN-related functions in a network device, comprising an OpenFlow
compliance test as well as custom targeted tests; iii) an application of the
methodology to devices from 7 different vendors, unveiling extensive anomalous
behaviors affecting even the most basic features; iv) a discussion of this outcome
in terms of relevance of the discovered anomalies and of their implications on the
applicability of state-of-the-art contributions on SDN. Besides taking a snapshot of
the viability of research results, with this paper we intend to highlight aspects
that operators should consider when picking SDN devices.

Joint work with M. Gradillo, G. Lospoto, C. Pisa, and M. Rimondini.

________________________________________________________

SEMINAR #2

=== Title ===
RoutingWatch: Visual Exploration and Analysis of Routing Events

=== Speaker ===
Massimo Rimondini
Researcher
Roma Tre University
http://www.dia.uniroma3.it/~compunet/www/view/person.php?id=max

=== Abstract ===
Network operators invest significant resources in monitoring and troubleshooting the
infrastructure they run. Currently, the availability of large networks of probing
devices, like, for example, RIPE Atlas, dramatically increases the amount of data an
operator can rely on. In particular, the large amount of traceroutes they can
produce are both an opportunity and a challenge. In this paper we provide a detailed
description of RoutingWatch, a visual tool for interactively performing searches and
analysis of routing events inferred from a large set of traceroutes. The key design
choices of RoutingWatch are based on discussions with network operators. We evaluate
the effectiveness of our approach by conducting a preliminary user study.

Joint work with D. Ceneda, M. Di Bartolomeo, V. Di Donato, M. Patrignani, and M.
Pizzonia.