Undecidable Problems for Probabilistic Network Programming

The software-defined networking language NetKAT is able to verify many useful properties of networks automatically via a PSPACE decision procedure for program equality. However, for its probabilistic extension ProbNetKAT, no such decision procedure is known. We show that several potentially useful properties of ProbNetKAT are in fact undecidable, including emptiness of support intersection and certain kinds of distribution bounds and program comparisons. We do so by embedding the Post Correspondence Problem in ProbNetKAT via direct product expressions, and by directly embedding probabilistic finite automata. 1998 ACM Subject Classification D.2.4 Software/Program Verification, D.3.1 Formal Definitions and Theory, F.3.1 Specifying and Verifying and Reasoning about Programs, F.4.3 Formal Languages