Instinctive Check Packet Generation

Nowadays networks are growing wide and more complex. However administrators use tools like ping and trace route to debug problems. Hence we implemented an automatic and Methodical approach for testing and debugging networks called Automatic Test Packet Generation (ATPG)[1]. This approach gets router configurations and generates a device-independent model. ATPG generate a few set of test packets to find every link in the network. Test packets are forwarded frequently and it detect failures to localize the fault. ATPG can detect both functional and performance (throughput, latency) problems. We found, less number of test packets is enough to test all rules in networks. For example, 4000 packets can cover all rules in Stanford backbone network, while 53 are much enough to cover all links. We implemented an automated and systematic approach for testing and debugging networks by name “Instinctive Check Packet Generation ” (ICPG). ICPG reads router configurations and generates a device-independent model. The model is used to generate a minimum set of test packets to (minimally) exercise every link in the network or (maximally) exercise every rule in the network. Test packets are sent periodically, and detected failures trigger a separate mechanism to localize the fault. ICPG can detect both functional (e.g., incorrect firewall rule) and performance problems (e.g., congested queue). ICPG complements but goes beyond earlier work in static checking (which cannot detect liveness or performance faults) or fault localization (which only localize faults given liveness results)