The SafetyNet Project


Project Overview | People | Work In Progress | Documents | Talks | Resources   



Project Overview

Active networks extend the functionality of existing networks by opening up the computation capabilities of the switches to the network users. This allows faster roll-out of new services and new applications which have lower latency and are more scalable. However, in opening up the shared resources of the switches to running programs, existing services might suffer a performance degradation, and more dangerously, a loss of service due to buggy or malicious programs.

In our research we aim to circumvent these problems by defining appropriate policies to protect the integrity of the network, such as defining limits on TTL fields in packets, then designing these policies into the type system of an Active Network programming language. Any program which type-checks is guaranteed not to contravene our safety policies. In addition, by using a strongly typed language, we can remove many of the run-time checks required by other language models, and so improve performance.

Recent work in the foundations of programming languages has provided mathematical models of language features such as distribution, code migration, resource bounds and security. We will use these techniques to provide a formal model of Active Network programming, and to show the correctness of the type system and the safety policies.

In parallel with the theoretical work upon the semantics, we shall be developing a compiler and run-time environment for the language. These will be used to build demonstration Active Network programs, which will be tested both within an extended simulation environment built upon the VINT ns simulator, and in limited scale experiments upon real networks.



People



Work in Progress

The current state of play on the semantics side of things can be found on Alan's temporary home while miscellaneous stuff can be found on Ian's Work in progress page .



Documents

  • Ian Wakeman, Alan Jeffrey, Tim Owen and Damyan Pepper "SafetyNet: A Language-Based Approach to Programmable Networks", July 2000.

  • Tim Owen "Programmer's Guide to the SafetyNet Language", December 1999, postscript

    A non-formal guide to the SafetyNet Programming Language.

  • Alan Jeffrey and Ian Wakeman "A Survey of Semantic Techniques for Active Networks", submitted to IEEE Networks special issue on active networks, gzipped postscript

    Active networks open up switches within the network to allow computation upon them. Because these switches are public resources, and are essential to the proper and correct running of many important systems, the safety and security requirements placed upon the computation environment must be much stricter than in many other environments. In this paper we describe the motivation for some basic system decisions and show how recent advances in the semantics of programming languages can meet the safety challenges presented by the system yet still provide good performance. As the corollary to this point, we argue that the construction of proofs over programs is a difficult thing to do, and should be left to the designer of the programming language and not the programmer.

  • Our bid to the HP Internet Philanthropic Initiative -- Next Generation Internet.

  • "Designing a Programming Language for Active Networks", submitted to Hipparch special issue of Network and ISDN Systems in gzipped postscript and html



Talks



Resources

First UK Programmable Networks and Telecommunications Workshop

We organised the First UK Programmable Networks and Telecommunications Workshop on behalf of the EPSRC and HP. The details of this event are available here , including the call for participation.

Mailing lists



Links to other AN sites


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Last modified: Wednesday 23 August 2000