Modeling middleboxes

The lack of a concise and standard language to describe diverse middlebox functionality and deployment configurations adversely affects current middlebox deployment, as well as middlebox-related research. To alleviate this problem, we present a simple middlebox model that succinctly describes how different middleboxes process packets and illustrate it by representing four common middleboxes. We set up a pilot online repository of middlebox models and prototyped model inference and validation tools.