Build a network emulator using Libvirt and KVM

In this post, I demonstrate how to create a network emulation scenario using Libvirt, the Qemu/KVM hypervisor, and Linux bridges to create and manage interconnected virtual machines on a host system. As I do so, I will share what I have learned about network virtualization on a Linux system. Libvirt provides a command-line interface that […]

Python for network engineers: a fast track guide

Are you like me? Are you a network engineer, or other professional, transitioning their skill set to include programming and automation? Does your programming experience experience come from a few programming courses you attended in college a long time ago? Then please read on because I created this Python guide for people like you and

Create a nested virtual machine in a Microsoft Azure Linux VM

Microsoft Azure unofficially supports nested virtualization using KVM on Linux virtual machines, which makes it possible to build network emulation scenarios in the cloud using the same technologies you would use if you were using your own PC or a local server. In this post, I will show you how to set up a Linux

Network Labs Using Nested Virtualization in the Cloud

Many open-source network simulation and emulation tools use full virtualization technologies like VMware, QEMU/KVM, or VirtualBox. These technologies require hardware support for virtualization such as Intel’s VT-x and AMD’s AMD-V. To gain direct access to this hardware support, researchers usually run network emulation test beds on their own PCs or servers but could not take

Enable nested virtualization on Google Cloud

Google Cloud Platform introduced nested virtualization support in September 2017. Nested virtualization is especially interesting to network emulation research since it allow users to run unmodified versions of popular network emulation tools like GNS3, EVE-NG, and Cloonix on a cloud instance. Google Cloud supports nested virtualization using the KVM hypervisor on Linux instances. It does

Install and run the Cloonix network emulator on Packet.net

This tutorial shows how to set up the Cloonix network emulator on a Packet.net server. It builds on top of my previous post about how to set up a virtualization server on Packet.net. Now, I focus on a specific case: setting up the Cloonix network emulator on the virtualization server. You should read my previous

Set up a dedicated virtualization server on Packet.net

Packet is a hardware-as-a-service vendor that provides dedicated servers on demand at very low cost. For me and my readers, Packet offers a solution to the problem of using cloud services to run complex network emulation scenarios that require hardware-level support for virtualization. Packet users may access powerful servers that empower them to perform activities

Install the CORE Network Emulator from source code

To install the CORE network emulator in recently released Linux distributions, including Ubuntu 16.04 and later, I recommend that you install it from the CORE Github source code repository. The Debian and Ubuntu maintainers will remove CORE packages from their repositories in the near future so we cannot install CORE using a package manager, anymore.

Netdev 2.1 conference report

I attended the Netdev 2.1 Conference in Montreal from April 6 to 8. Netdev is a community-driven conference mainly for Linux networking developers and developers whose applications rely on code in the Linux kernel networking subsystem. It focuses very tightly on Linux kernel networking and on how packets are handled through the Linux kernel as

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