An erroneous change to a company’s network can cause major operational disruptions, which is why administrators usually take great pains to validate updates before rolling them out. It’s a difficult task that Forward Networks Inc. is working to simplify using math.

The startup is supported by $16 million in newly raised funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Andreessen Horowitz and A Capital. Forward’s efforts build upon the research that its four co-founders did while working on their Ph.D.s at Stanford, where they helped lay the technical groundwork for modern software-defined networks. They’ve distilled their knowledge into a platform that can create a “mathematically accurate software copy” of network infrastructure for testing purposes.

According to Forward, the virtual replica allows administrators to assess the impact of an update without risking their production environments. It’s touted as a more reliable alternative to traditional testing tools that create only partial representations of network topology.

Before making a change to the software copy, users can input operational rules into Forward to define what the ideal result should be. An administrator could, for example, require that a particular cluster of servers gain the ability to exchange data with another cluster through at least two paths. Forward will check network settings against the rules once the update has been deployed to ensure that everything works as expected.

Then once they’ve established that the core objectives are met, administrators can use the platform to check if the change had any effects they didn’t foresee in advance. Forward provides a set of search features for finding operational data to help with such analysis. The startup says that its software can provide visibility down to individual network devices and how they handle traffic.

Forward’s platform shares some similarities with the product developed by another venture-backed startup called Veriflow Inc. The latter firm, which raised $8.2 million in funding last year, uses mathematical methods to simulate network infrastructure and find weaknesses.

Today’s funding will help Forward Networks spread the word about its platform. The startup has raised over $27 million from investors to date.

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