Dynamic Control of Software-Defined Networks

Xin Jin, Princeton University
Host: Michael Dinitz

Computer networks run many network services (e.g., routing, monitoring, load balancing) to support applications from search engines to big data analytics. These network services have to continuously update network configurations to alleviate congestion, to detect and block cyber-attacks, to perform planned maintenance, etc. Network updates are painful because network administrators unfortunately have to balance the tradeoff between the disruption caused by the problem (e.g., congestion and cyber-attacks), and the disruption introduced in fixing the problem. In this talk, I will present my research on designing and building new network control systems to efficiently handle network updates for multiple network services. First, I will present CoVisor, a new network hypervisor that can host multiple network services and efficiently compile their configuration changes to a single update. Then, I will describe Dionysus, a new network update scheduler that can quickly and consistently apply the network update to a distributed collection of switches. I have built prototype systems for CoVisor and Dionysus, and part of CoVisor has been integrated into ONOS, a popular open-source control platform for software-defined networks developed by ON.LAB.

Speaker Biography

Xin Jin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University, advised by Professor Jennifer Rexford. He has a broad research interest in networked systems, cloud computing and computer networking. His PhD study focuses on Software-Defined Networking (SDN). He has published several research papers in this area in premier venues, including SIGCOMM, NSDI and CoNEXT. He has interned and collaborated with leading research institutes and cutting-edge startups like Microsoft Research and Rockley Photonics. He received his BS degree in computer science and BA degree in economics from Peking University in 2011, and his MA degree in computer science from Princeton University in 2013. He has received many awards and honors, including the Siebel Scholar (2016), a Princeton Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Fellowship (2015), and a Princeton Graduate Fellowship (2011).