NetCheck: Network diagnoses from blackbox traces

Yanyan Zhuang, Eleni Gessiou, Steven Portzer, Fraida Fund, Monzur Muhammad, Ivan Beschastnikh, Justin Cappos

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

    Abstract

    This paper introduces NetCheck, a tool designed to diagnose network problems in large and complex applications. NetCheck relies on blackbox tracing mechanisms, such as strace, to automatically collect sequences of network system call invocations generated by the application hosts. NetCheck performs its diagnosis 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 expected network semantics. Our evaluation demonstrates that NetCheck is able to diagnose failures in popular and complex applications 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, NetCheck correctly detects over 95% of the network problems we found from bug trackers of projects like Python, Apache, and Ruby. When applied to traces of faults reproduced in a live network, NetCheck identified the primary cause of the fault in 90% of the cases. Additionally, NetCheck is efficient and can process a GB-long trace in about 2 minutes.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Title of host publicationProceedings of the 11th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2014
    PublisherUSENIX Association
    Pages115-128
    Number of pages14
    ISBN (Electronic)9781931971096
    StatePublished - 2014
    Event11th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2014 - Seattle, United States
    Duration: Apr 2 2014Apr 4 2014

    Publication series

    NameProceedings of the 11th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2014

    Conference

    Conference11th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2014
    Country/TerritoryUnited States
    CitySeattle
    Period4/2/144/4/14

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Control and Systems Engineering
    • Computer Networks and Communications

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