ByteTracker: An Agentless and Real-time Path-aware Network Probing System
Shixian Guo, Kefei Liu, Yulin Lai, Yangyang Bai, Ziwei Zhao, Songlin Liu, Jianghang Ning, Gen Li, HU Jian-wei, Yongbin Dong, Feng Luo, Sisi Wen, Qi Zhang, Yuan Chen, Jiale Feng, Yang Bai, Chengcai Yao, Zhe Liu, Xin Hu, Yang Lv · 2025
As the number of data center servers grows into the millions and due to the demand for more accurate, rapid and powerful network fault detection and location, the existing Pingmesh-centric monitoring and diagnostic system is not efficient enough. In this paper, we propose ByteTracker, the first agentless probing and diagnostic system for large-scale data center networks. It does not need to deploy probe processes or make any configurations on end hosts, and all probes are launched by a small number of centralized Probers. ByteTracker achieves accurate, real-time probe path tracking with packet mirroring on switches. By reducing end-host probe noise, precisely identifying network timeout probes, accurately tracking probe paths, and marking the failed switch with multiple network timeout probes, ByteTracker can locate network failures with nearly 100% accuracy. We have deployed ByteTracker in all of our data centers for over half a year. During deployment, ByteTracker can detect almost all network anomalies and locate them within 5 seconds with 100% accuracy.