Is the Network Turing-Complete? EPFL Technical Report 187131

Abstract

Ensuring correct network behavior is hard. This is the case even for simple networks, and adding middleboxes only complicates this task. In this paper, we demonstrate a fundamental property of networks. Namely, we show a way of using a network to emulate the Rule 110 cellular automaton. We do so using just a set of network devices with simple features such as packet matching, header rewriting and round-robin loadbalancing. Therefore, we show that a network can emulate any Turing machine. This ultimately means that analyzing dynamic network behavior can be as hard as analyzing an arbitrary program. Analyzing a network containing middleboxes is already understood to be hard. Our result shows that using even only statically configured switches can make the problem intractable.