Descriptions of open source networking software for Linux or BSD systems: configuration, operation, maintenance
When testing SDN functions in the Mininet network emulator and viewing captured OpenFlow messages in a packet analyzer such as Wireshark, it is difficult to identify which SDN switch is the source or destination of each captured message. The only reliable way to identify which SDN switch sent or received an OpenFlow message is to […]
In 2014, the GNS3 development team launched a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to support development of a major new release, version 1.0, which was released in October that same year. I was happy to support the Kickstarter campaign and now I am finally getting around to taking a look at the new version of GNS3.
No Starch Press recently sent me a preview copy of a new book about the GNS3 network simulator, titled The Book of GNS3 written by Jason Neumann. This book covers the new version of GNS3, GNS3 1.x. Here is my review of The Book of GNS3. The Book of GNS3 effectively serves as a user
When a researcher uses the Mininet network simulator to create a network of hosts and switches connected to an SDN controller, he or she may wish to be able to see what the simulated network topology looks like. The POX SDN controller includes a component that will send network topology data to the Gephi data
This post describes how to install the Gephi graph visualization utility on the Mininet 2.2 virtual machine. I want to investigate the node and link discovery function of OpenFlow and, to do that, I plan to experiment with some components of the POX SDN controller that interface with the Gephi graph visualization utility. Previously, I
In this tutorial, we demonstrate basic software-defined networking (SDN) concepts using the POX SDN controller, POX components, and the Mininet network simulator. We will show how to use the POX SDN controller to update flow tables on the SDN switches in a simulated network so every host on the network can forward packets to another
The CORE Network Emulator development team released CORE version 4.7 in August 2014. I installed this new version of CORE on a newly-installed Linux 14.04 system and tested some of the new features. In this post, I list the new features that are most relevant to researchers who use the CORE GUI to set up
The Cloonix open-source network simulator uses the Spice remote desktop system to provide a virtual desktop connection to quest virtual machines that run a graphical user interface, such as Microsoft Windows or a Linux desktop environment. To use a graphical desktop user interface on a guest VM, we access the VM using the Spice desktop
To run a program that uses a graphical user interface on a guest virtual machine running in the cloonix open-source network simulator, log into the guest VM from the host computer using SSH and forward the X11 display. Then, any X11 program you run on the guest VM using that SSH session, such as Wireshark,
As we work through this tutorial, we will learn how to use the cloonix graph interface to build a simulation scenario that includes two small IPv6 networks connected to each other by two routers via static routes. We will also learn how cloonix saves network topologies and guest virtual machine root filesystems. The cloonix open-source
The cloonix project provides a variety of root filesystems for use in the cloonix network simulator. These root filesystem only have the most basic software packages installed and will not support advanced network configuration (with the exception of router filesystems such as openwrt). To create a network simulation that runs real-world networking software, we need
The cloonix development team recently updated the cloonix network simulator to version 24. This post describes the changes in cloonix v24 compared to cloonix v19, which we reviewed in a previous post. Version 24 simplifies the setup of guest virtual machines, improves the link performance emulation tool, and adds new interface types designed to improve