IC Colloquium: A Language-Based Approach to Network Verification
By: Nate Foster - Cornell University
Abstract
The field of network verification has made remarkable progress, going from academic papers to production deployments within a decade. But while current tools are effective at finding bugs, their design is ad hoc, driven more by solver capabilities and specific use cases than foundational principles. This talk will introduce NetKAT, a domain-specific network verification framework grounded in classical notions from formal language theory. I will discuss the language's design, implementation, and semantic foundations, as well as recent extensions that support dynamic reconfiguration, probabilistic reasoning, and more.
Bio
Nate Foster is a Professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean for Research in the Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science at Cornell University. His research focuses on developing language-based tools for building reliable, secure systems. He holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, an MPhil from Cambridge University, and a BA from Williams College. An ACM Fellow, Nate has received several awards including a Sloan Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, the SIGPLAN Robin Milner Young Researcher Award, and the SIGCOMM Rising Star Award.
More information
Abstract
The field of network verification has made remarkable progress, going from academic papers to production deployments within a decade. But while current tools are effective at finding bugs, their design is ad hoc, driven more by solver capabilities and specific use cases than foundational principles. This talk will introduce NetKAT, a domain-specific network verification framework grounded in classical notions from formal language theory. I will discuss the language's design, implementation, and semantic foundations, as well as recent extensions that support dynamic reconfiguration, probabilistic reasoning, and more.
Bio
Nate Foster is a Professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean for Research in the Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science at Cornell University. His research focuses on developing language-based tools for building reliable, secure systems. He holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, an MPhil from Cambridge University, and a BA from Williams College. An ACM Fellow, Nate has received several awards including a Sloan Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, the SIGPLAN Robin Milner Young Researcher Award, and the SIGCOMM Rising Star Award.
More information
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Contact
- Host: George Candea