Publications

Explainable Network Verification via Localized Subspecification

Yongzheng Zhang
,
Yaxuan Lin
,
Haoxian Chen
,
Ruize Ma
,
Amirmohammad Nazari
,
Mukund Raghothaman
, and Peng Zhang

Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM '26

Nüwa: A Generative Control Plane for AI Network Simulation

Wenkai Li ,
Ran Shu
, Peng Zhang ,
Yiren Zhao
,
Danfeng Shan
, and
Yongqiang Xiong

Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM'26

AccessRefinery: Fast Mining Concise Access Control Intents on Public Cloud

Ning Kang , Peng Zhang , Jianyuan Zhang , Hao Li , Dan Wang , Zhenrong Gu ,
Weibo Lin
,
Shibiao Jiang
,
Zhu He
,
Xu Du
,
Longfei Chen
,
Jun Li
, and
Xiaohong Guan

Proceedings of ACM FSE '26

Fast SMT-Based Fault Tolerance Verification for Wide Area Networks

Ning Kang , Peng Zhang , Hao Li , and Jianyuan Zhang

Proceedings of FME FM '26

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Mitigating CPU Frontend for Complex Data Plane Applications

Yihan Dang
, Hao Li , Ze Xia ,
Jiajun Luan
, and Peng Zhang

Proceedings of USENIX NSDI '26

REAL: Emulating Control Plane at Simulator’s Cost

Ze Xia , Hao Li ,
Jinyu Fu
,
Xin Wan
,
Yihan Dang
,
Danfeng Shan
,
Li Chen
, and Peng Zhang

Proceedings of USENIX NSDI '26

Community Award

Relia: Accelerating the Analysis of Cloud Access Control Policies

Dan Wang , Peng Zhang , Zhenrong Gu ,
Weibo Lin
,
Shibiao Jiang
,
Zhu He
,
Xu Du
,
Longfei Chen
,
Jun Li
, and
Xiaohong Guan

Proceedings of IEEE/ACM ASE '25

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Network Specification Mining With High Fidelity, Scalability, and Readability

Ning Kang , Peng Zhang ,
Hao Li
,
Sisi Wen
,
Chaoyang Ji
, and
Yongqiang Yang

IEEE Transactions on Networking 2025

S2: A Distributed Configuration Verifier for Hyper-Scale Networks

Dan Wang , Peng Zhang , Wenbing Sun , Wenkai Li , Xing Feng , Hao Li ,
Jiawei Chen
,
Weirong Jiang
, and
Yongping Tang

Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM '25

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Nüwa: Efficient Generative Control Plane for AI Network Simulation

Wenkai Li ,
Ran Shu
, Peng Zhang , and
Yongqiang Xiong

Proceedings of APNet '25

NDD: A Decision Diagram for Network Verification

Zechun Li , Peng Zhang , Yichi Zhang , and
Hongkun Yang

Proceedings of USENIX NSDI '25

Outstanding Paper Award

Expresso: Comprehensively Reasoning About External Routes Using Symbolic Simulation

Dan Wang , Peng Zhang , and Aaron Gember-Jacobson

Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM '24

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Best Paper Honorable Mention

Automatic Configuration Repair

Xu Liu , Peng Zhang ,
Anubhavnidhi Abhashkumar
,
Jiawei Chen
, and
Weirong Jiang

Proceedings of ACM HotNets '24

Modular Data Plane Verification for Compositional Networks

Xu Liu , Peng Zhang , Hao Li , and Wenbing Sun

Proceedings of ACM CoNEXT '23

Network Specification Mining with High Fidelity and Scalability

Ning Kang , Peng Zhang , Hao Li ,
Sisi Wen
,
Chaoyang Ji
, and
Yongqiang Yang

Proceedings of IEEE ICNP '23

LemonNFV: Consolidating Heterogeneous Network Functions at Line Speed

Hao Li ,
Yihan Dang
,
Guangda Sun
,
Guyue Liu
,
Danfeng Shan
, and Peng Zhang+

Proceedings of USENIX NSDI '23

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Symbolic Router Execution

Peng Zhang , Dan Wang , and Aaron Gember-Jacobson

Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM '22

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Differential Network Analysis

Peng Zhang , Aaron Gember-Jacobson ,
Yueshang Zuo
,
Yuhao Huang
, Xu Liu , and Hao Li

Proceedings of USENIX NSDI '22

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Programming Network Stack for Middleboxes with Rubik

Hao Li ,
Changhao Wu
,
Guangda Sun
, Peng Zhang ,
Danfeng Shan
,
Tian Pan
, and
Chengchen Hu

Proceedings of USENIX NSDI '21

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Network-Wide Forwarding Anomaly Detection and Localization in Software Defined Networks

Peng Zhang ,
Fangzheng Zhang
,
Shimin Xu
,
Zuoru Yang
, Hao Li ,
Qi Li
,
Huanzhao Wang
,
Chao Shen
, and
Chengchen Hu

IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking

Verifying Rule Enforcement in Software Defined Networks with REV

Peng Zhang ,
Hui Wu
,
Dan Zhang
, and
Qi Li

IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking

Incremental Network Configuration Verification

Peng Zhang ,
Yuhao Huang
, Aaron Gember-Jacobson ,
Wenbo Shi
, Xu Liu ,
Hongkun Yang
, and
Zhiqiang Zuo

Proceedings of ACM HotNets '20

APKeep: Realtime Verification for Real Networks

Peng Zhang , Xu Liu ,
Hongkun Yang
, Ning Kang ,
Zhengchang Gu
, and Hao Li

Proceedings of USENIX NSDI '20

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A Modular Compiler for Network Programming Languages

Hao Li , Peng Zhang ,
Guangda Sun
,
Chengchen Hu
,
Danfeng Shan
,
Tian Pan
, and
Qiang Fu

Proceedings of ACM CoNEXT '20

Fast Data Plane Testing for Software-Defined Networks With RuleChecker

Peng Zhang ,
Cheng Zhang
, and
Chengchen Hu

IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking

FOCES: Detecting Forwarding Anomalies in Software Defined Networks

Peng Zhang ,
Shimin Xu
,
Zuoru Yang
, Hao Li ,
Qi Li
,
Huanzhao Wang
, and
Chengchen Hu

Proceedings of IEEE ICDCS '18

Towards Rule Enforcement Verification for Software Defined Networks

Peng Zhang

Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM '17

Stick to The Script: Monitoring The Policy Compliance of SDN Data Plane

Peng Zhang , Hao Li ,
Chengchen Hu
,
Liujia Hu
, and
Lei Xiong

Proceedings of ACM/IEEE ANCS '16

Modular SDN Compiler Design with Intermediate Representation

Hao Li ,
Chengchen Hu
, Peng Zhang , and
Lei Xie

Poster Session of ACM SIGCOMM '16

Mind the Gap: Monitoring the Control-Data Plane Consistency in Software Defined Networks

Peng Zhang , Hao Li ,
Chengchen Hu
,
Liujia Hu
,
Lei Xiong
,
Ruilong Wang
, and
Yuemei Zhang

Proceedings of ACM CoNEXT '16