Routing Oblivious Measurement Analytics

Abstract

Network-wide traffic analytics are often needed for various network monitoring tasks. These measurements are often performed by collecting samples at network switches, which are then sent to the controller for aggregation. However, performing such analytics without "overcounting" flows or packets that traverse multiple measurement switches is challenging. Therefore, existing solutions often simplify the problem by making assumptions on the routing or measurement switch placement.We introduce AROMA, a measurement infrastructure that generates a uniform sample of packets and flows regardless of the topology, workload and routing. Therefore, AROMA can be deployed in many settings, and can also work in the data plane using programmable PISA switches. The AROMA infrastructure includes controller algorithms that approximate a variety of essential measurement tasks while providing formal accuracy guarantees. Using extensive simulations on real-world network traces, we show that our algorithms are competitively accurate compared to the best existing solutions despite the fact that they make no assumptions on the underlying network or the placement of measurement switches.