AdamMC: A Model Checker for Petri Nets with Transits against Flow-LTL (Full Version)

TL;DR

AdamMC is a novel model checker that verifies data flow correctness in software-defined networks modeled as Petri nets with transits against Flow-LTL, enabling efficient analysis of large network configurations.

Contribution

It introduces AdamMC, the first tool for model checking Petri nets with transits against Flow-LTL, with a new reduction method for improved performance.

Findings

Handles networks with up to 82 switches

Significant performance improvements over previous prototypes

Automatically encodes network updates as Petri nets with transits

Abstract

The correctness of networks is often described in terms of the individual data flow of components instead of their global behavior. In software-defined networks, it is far more convenient to specify the correct behavior of packets than the global behavior of the entire network. Petri nets with transits extend Petri nets and Flow-LTL extends LTL such that the data flows of tokens can be tracked. We present the tool AdamMC as the first model checker for Petri nets with transits against Flow-LTL. We describe how AdamMC can automatically encode concurrent updates of software-defined networks as Petri nets with transits and how common network specifications can be expressed in Flow-LTL. Underlying AdamMC is a reduction to a circuit model checking problem. We introduce a new reduction method that results in tremendous performance improvements compared to a previous prototype. Thereby, AdamMC can handle software-defined networks with up to 82 switches.