Virl

Abstract

The increasing demand to provide new network services in a timely and efficient manner is driving the need to design, test and deploy networks quickly and consistently. Testing and verifying at scale is a challenge: network equipment is expensive, requires space, power and cooling, and there is never enough test equipment for everyone who wants to use it! Network virtualization technologies enable a flexible environment for educators, researchers, and operators to create functional models of current, planned, or theoretical networks.This demonstration will show VIRL -the Virtual Internet Routing Lab -a platform that can be used for network change validation, training, education, research, or networkaware applications development. The platform combines network virtualization technologies with virtual machines (VMs) running open-source and commercial operating systems; VM orchestration capabilities; a context-aware configuration engine; and an extensible data-collection framework. The system simplifies the process to create both simple and complex environments, run simulations, and collect measurement data.

NES: Towards Lifecycle Automation for Emulation-Based Experimentation

“…Furthermore, the adoption for Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies means that network vendors release an increasing number of software Virtual Machine (VM) appliances that replicate the characteristics of hardware devices. Such appliances are compatible with network emulation and can improve the realism of an emulated network experiment [3].…”

“…Originally, network emulation focused on accurately recreating packet-level characteristics on network traffic [11], [12] and replicating topologies with virtual routers in a single host [13]. In recent years, emulation realism has improved, with platforms like Cisco VIRL [3] allowing the inclusion of virtual hosts and VNF appliances in the form of VMs and namespaces and running large topologies entirely in software.…”