Abstracting Networks with Measurable Guarantees

To simplify definitions of network-wide behaviors (e.g., in datacenter transports), networks are often represented by virtual switches. In most cases, the buffering architecture of a representing virtual switch is inherited from analytic models implementing the desired properties, and is completely decoupled from the represented network topology. Thus, it is unclear how well the network infrastructure is exploited. This paper makes the first attempt in understanding which buffering architectures can best represent a given network, and how buffer management decisions can be mapped back to a represented network.