We describe our experiences using formal methods and automated theorem proving for network operation at scale. The experiences are based on developing and applying the SecGuru and RCDC (Reality Checker for Data Centers) tools in Azure. SecGuru has been ...

Network virtualization stacks are the linchpins of public clouds. A key goal is to provide performance isolation so that workloads on one Virtual Machine (VM) do not adversely impact the network experience of another VM. Using data from a major public ...

With increasing link speeds and slowdown in the scaling of CPU speeds, packet scheduling in software is resulting in lower precision and higher CPU utilization. By offloading packet scheduling to the hardware such as a NIC, one can potentially overcome ...

In-network Access Control List (ACL) is an important technique in ensuring network-wide connectivity and security. As cloud-scale WANs today constantly evolve in size and complexity, in-network ACL rules are becoming increasingly more complex. This ...

Emerging Multicore SoC SmartNICs, enclosing rich computing resources (e.g., a multicore processor, onboard DRAM, accelerators, programmable DMA engines), hold the potential to offload generic datacenter server tasks. However, it is unclear how to use a ...

Software switches are emerging as a vital measurement vantage point in many networked systems. Sketching algorithms or sketches, provide high-fidelity approximate measurements, and appear as a promising alternative to traditional approaches such as ...

The network communications between the cloud and the client have become the weak link for global cloud services that aim to provide low latency services to their clients. In this paper, we first characterize WAN latency from the viewpoint of a large ...

We present Elmo, a system that addresses the multicast scalability problem in multi-tenant datacenters. Modern cloud applications frequently exhibit one-to-many communication patterns and, at the same time, require sub-millisecond latencies and high ...