BITS Darshini: A Modular, Concurrent Protocol Analyzer Workbench

Abstract

Network measurements are essential for troubleshooting and active management of networks. Protocol analysis of captured network packet traffic is an important passive network measurement technique used by researchers and network operations engineers. In this work, we present a measurement workbench tool named BITS Darshini (Darshini in short) to enable scientific network measurements. We have created Darshini as a modular, concurrent web application that stores experimental meta-data and allows users to specify protocol parse graphs. Darshini performs protocol analysis on a concurrent pipeline architecture, persists the analysis to a database and provides the analysis results via a REST API service. We formulate the problem of mapping protocol parse graph to a concurrent pipeline as a graph embedding problem. Our tool, Darshini, performs protocol analysis up to transport layer and is suitable for the study of small and medium-sized networks. Darshini enables secure collaboration and consultations with experts.