An Analytics Approach to Traffic Analysis in
Network Virtualization
Hui Zhang, Junghwan Rhee, Nipun Arora,
Qiang Xu, Cristian Lumezanu, Guofei Jiang
www.nec-labs.com
Motivation
 Challenges in virtual network trouble-shooting
– Complex configurations
– Miscellaneous network devices
– Assorted traffic groups
Multi-tenant Data Center
An in-host network
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FLOWVIEW Overview
 FLOWVIEW is a tool for visualizing and analyzing
OVS packet traces
– Summarization (from individual events to packet traces)
– Data reduction (trace categorization and clustering)
– Analysis (visualization and comparative analysis)
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Trace Slicing
 A holistic view on the lifetime of a packet
– a series of events collected from routers/switches
that the packet goes through during its routing.
– similar to IP Traceback output.
The snapshot of a FLOWVIEW slice example
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Slice Features
 FLOWVIEW defines three kinds of features on
slices
– Path features
– Link features
– Packet features
Path feature examples
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Trace Analysis
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Clustering of trace slices
Ranking of trace slices
Query of trace slices
Verification of trace slices
A ranking example
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Implementation
Clustering based
on slice features
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Conclusion
 FLOWVIEW is a tool for visualizing and
analyzing data center network packet traces
– individual trace events from hypervisors and
switches are re-organized into trace slices that
represent the life-time of packets.
– offers versatile analytics features such as clustering,
ranking, querying, verification as well as a graphical
interface.
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www.nec-labs.com
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