GNS3 1.3 will create and manage VirtualBox virtual machine linked clones from within the GNS3 user interface. This simplifies the process of setting up VirtualBox virtual machines in GNS3, which makes GNS3 easier to use for studying the operation of open-source routers, switches, and hosts in network simulation scenarios. In this post, I will show […]
When network engineers are learning the concepts of software defined networking and SDN controllers, they may want to experiment with SDN network scenarios before learning to write programs to be used by the SDN controllers. POX is a simple-to-use SDN controller that is bundled with the Mininet SDN network emulator and is used in education
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
The IMUNES open-source network simulator can now be installed on and run on Linux. Previously, IMUNES was available only for the FreeBSD operating system. The Linux version of IMUNES is ready to be used and can set up and run network emulation scenarios. It does not yet have all the features offered in the FreeBSD
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
The GNS3 development team produced a major new release, version 1.0, in October 2014. Since then, they have been regularly updating GNS3 and, at the time I write this, the latest version of GNS3 is version 1.3.7. The latest version of GNS3 cannot be installed using a package manager like Ubuntu Software Center or Synaptic
Open-source DevOps tools are used to deploy applications and services in datacenter server networks, but they may also enable researchers or students to simulate networks. In this post, we will survey popular open-source DevOps tools and provide links to information that shows how to use them to create network simulation scenarios. Most open-source network simulators
The CORE Network Emulator has been updated to version 4.8. This new version fixes the issues I noted in my previous review of CORE release 4.7. It also implements some new features. See the CORE 4.8 release notes for all the details. The most visible change is the addition of some new services — most
The Cloonix development team released an update to Cloonix version 26 in May 2015. An important addition in version 26 is a greatly expanded and improved Cloonix user guide. The new version also changes the user interface, adds a new LAN type, and eliminates the t2t device. It also includes updated guest virtual machines.
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