Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

https://github.com/containernet/containernet

Mininet fork adding support for container-based (e.g. Docker) emulated hosts.
https://github.com/containernet/containernet

container containernet docker emulation mininet networking

Last synced: about 2 months ago
JSON representation

Mininet fork adding support for container-based (e.g. Docker) emulated hosts.

Lists

README 

        
# Containernet






Containernet is a fork of the famous [Mininet](http://mininet.org) network emulator and allows to use [Docker](https://www.docker.com) containers as hosts in emulated network topologies. This enables interesting functionalities to build networking/cloud emulators and testbeds. Containernet is actively used by the research community, focussing on experiments in the field of cloud computing, fog computing, network function virtualization (NFV) and multi-access edge computing (MEC). One example for this is the [NFV multi-PoP infrastructure emulator](https://github.com/sonata-nfv/son-emu) which was created by the SONATA-NFV project and is now part of the [OpenSource MANO (OSM)](https://osm.etsi.org) project.



## Features



- Add, remove Docker containers to Mininet topologies

- Connect Docker containers to topology (to switches, other containers, or legacy Mininet hosts)

- Execute commands inside containers by using the Mininet CLI

- Dynamic topology changes

  - Add hosts/containers to a _running_ Mininet topology

  - Connect hosts/docker containers to a _running_ Mininet topology

  - Remove Hosts/Docker containers/links from a _running_ Mininet topology

- Resource limitation of Docker containers

  - CPU limitation with Docker CPU share option

  - CPU limitation with Docker CFS period/quota options

  - Memory/swap limitation

  - Change CPU/mem limitations at runtime!

- Expose container ports and set environment variables of containers through Python API

- Traffic control links (delay, bw, loss, jitter)

- Automated installation based on Ansible playbook



## Installation



Containernet comes with two installation and deployment options.



### Option 1: Bare-metal installation



This option is the most flexible. Your machine should run Ubuntu **20.04 LTS** and **Python3**.



First install Ansible:



```bash

sudo apt-get install ansible

```



Then clone the repository:



```bash

git clone https://github.com/containernet/containernet.git

```



Finally run the Ansible playbook to install required dependencies:



```bash

sudo ansible-playbook -i "localhost," -c local containernet/ansible/install.yml

```



After the installation finishes, you should be able to [get started](#get-started).



### Option 2: Nested Docker deployment



Containernet can be executed within a privileged Docker container (nested container deployment). There is also a pre-build Docker image available on [Docker Hub](https://hub.docker.com/r/containernet/containernet/).



**Attention:** Container resource limitations, e.g. CPU share limits, are not supported in the nested container deployment. Use bare-metal installations if you need those features.



You can build the container locally:



```bash

docker build -t containernet/containernet .

```



or alternatively pull the latest pre-build container:



```bash

docker pull containernet/containernet

```



You can then directly start the default containernet example:



```bash

docker run --name containernet -it --rm --privileged --pid='host' -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock containernet/containernet

```



or run an interactive container and drop to the shell:



```bash

docker run --name containernet -it --rm --privileged --pid='host' -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock containernet/containernet /bin/bash

```



## Get started



Using Containernet is very similar to using Mininet.



### Running a basic example



Make sure you are in the `containernet` directory. You can start an example topology with some empty Docker containers connected to the network:



```bash

sudo python3 examples/containernet_example.py

```



After launching the emulated network, you can interact with the involved containers through Mininet's interactive CLI. You can for example:



- use `containernet> d1 ifconfig` to see the config of container `d1`

- use `containernet> d1 ping -c4 d2` to ping between containers



You can exit the CLI using `containernet> exit`.



### Running a client-server example



Let's simulate a webserver and a client making requests. For that, we need a server and client image.

First, change into the `containernet/examples/basic_webserver` directory.



Containernet already provides a simple Python server for testing purposes. To build the server image, just run



```bash

docker build -f Dockerfile.server -t test_server:latest .

```



If you have not added your user to the `docker` group as described [here](https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/linux-postinstall/), you will need to prepend `sudo`. 



We further need a basic client to make a CURL request. Containernet provides that as well. Please run



```bash

docker build -f Dockerfile.client -t test_client:latest .

```



Now that we have a server and client image, we can create hosts using them. You can either checkout the topology

script `demo.py` first or run it directly:



```bash

sudo python3 demo.py

```



If everything worked, you should be able to see following output:



```txt

Execute: client.cmd("time curl 10.0.0.251")

Hello world.

```



### Customizing topologies



You can also add hosts with resource restrictions or mounted volumes:



```python

# ...



d1 = net.addDocker('d1', ip='10.0.0.251', dimage="ubuntu:trusty")

d2 = net.addDocker('d2', ip='10.0.0.252', dimage="ubuntu:trusty", cpu_period=50000, cpu_quota=25000)

d3 = net.addHost('d3', ip='11.0.0.253', cls=Docker, dimage="ubuntu:trusty", cpu_shares=20)

d4 = net.addDocker('d4', dimage="ubuntu:trusty", volumes=["/:/mnt/vol1:rw"])



# ...

```



## Documentation



Containernet's documentation can be found in the [GitHub wiki](https://github.com/containernet/containernet/wiki). The documentation for the underlying Mininet project can be found on the [Mininet website](http://mininet.org/).



## Research



Containernet has been used for a variety of research tasks and networking projects. If you use Containernet, let us know!



### Cite this work



If you use Containernet for your work, please cite the following publication:



M. Peuster, H. Karl, and S. v. Rossem: [**MeDICINE: Rapid Prototyping of Production-Ready Network Services in Multi-PoP Environments**](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7919490/). IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), Palo Alto, CA, USA, pp. 148-153. doi: 10.1109/NFV-SDN.2016.7919490. (2016)



Bibtex:



```bibtex

@inproceedings{peuster2016medicine,

    author={M. Peuster and H. Karl and S. van Rossem},

    booktitle={2016 IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN)},

    title={MeDICINE: Rapid prototyping of production-ready network services in multi-PoP environments},

    year={2016},

    volume={},

    number={},

    pages={148-153},

    doi={10.1109/NFV-SDN.2016.7919490},

    month={Nov}

}

```



### Publications



- M. Peuster, H. Karl, and S. v. Rossem: [MeDICINE: Rapid Prototyping of Production-Ready Network Services in Multi-PoP Environments](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7919490/). IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), Palo Alto, CA, USA, pp. 148-153. doi: 10.1109/NFV-SDN.2016.7919490. IEEE. (2016)



- S. v. Rossem, W. Tavernier, M. Peuster, D. Colle, M. Pickavet and P. Demeester: [Monitoring and debugging using an SDK for NFV-powered telecom applications](https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8521281/file/8521284.pdf). IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), Palo Alto, CA, USA, Demo Session. IEEE. (2016)



- Qiao, Yuansong, et al. [Doopnet: An emulator for network performance analysis of Hadoop clusters using Docker and Mininet.](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7543832/) Computers and Communication (ISCC), 2016 IEEE Symposium on. IEEE. (2016)



- M. Peuster, S. Dräxler, H. Razzaghi, S. v. Rossem, W. Tavernier and H. Karl: [A Flexible Multi-PoP Infrastructure Emulator for Carrier-grade MANO Systems](https://cs.uni-paderborn.de/fileadmin/informatik/fg/cn/Publications_Conference_Paper/Publications_Conference_Paper_2017/peuster_netsoft_demo_paper_2017.pdf). In IEEE 3rd Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft) Demo Track . (2017) **Best demo award!**



- M. Peuster and H. Karl: [Profile Your Chains, Not Functions: Automated Network Service Profiling in DevOps Environments](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8169826/). IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), Berlin, Germany. IEEE. (2017)



- M. Peuster, H. Küttner and H. Karl: [Let the state follow its flows: An SDN-based flow handover protocol to support state migration](https://ris.uni-paderborn.de/publication/3345). In IEEE 4th Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft). IEEE. (2018) **Best student paper award!**



- M. Peuster, J. Kampmeyer and H. Karl: [Containernet 2.0: A Rapid Prototyping Platform for Hybrid Service Function Chains](https://ris.uni-paderborn.de/publication/3346). In IEEE 4th Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft) Demo, Montreal, Canada. (2018)



- M. Peuster, M. Marchetti, G. García de Blas, H. Karl: [Emulation-based Smoke Testing of NFV Orchestrators in Large Multi-PoP Environments](https://ris.uni-paderborn.de/publication/3347). In IEEE European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC), Lubljana, Slovenia. (2018)



- S. Schneider, M. Peuster,Wouter Tvernier and H. Karl: [A Fully Integrated Multi-Platform NFV SDK](https://ris.uni-paderborn.de/record/6974). In IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN) Demo, Verona, Italy. (2018)



- M. Peuster, S. Schneider, Frederic Christ and H. Karl: [A Prototyping Platform to Validate and Verify Network Service Header-based Service Chains](https://ris.uni-paderborn.de/record/6483). In IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN) 5GNetApp, Verona, Italy. (2018)



- S. Schneider, M. Peuster and H. Karl: [A Generic Emulation Framework for Reusing and Evaluating VNF Placement Algorithms](https://ris.uni-paderborn.de/record/6972). In IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), Verona, Italy. (2018)



- M. Peuster, S. Schneider, D. Behnke, M. Müller, P-B. Bök, and H. Karl: [Prototyping and Demonstrating 5G Verticals: The Smart Manufacturing Case](https://ris.uni-paderborn.de/record/8792). In IEEE 5th Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft) Demo, Paris, France. (2019)



- M. Peuster, M. Marchetti, G. Garcia de Blas, Holger Karl: [Automated testing of NFV orchestrators against carrier-grade multi-PoP scenarios using emulation-based smoke testing](https://ris.uni-paderborn.de/record/10325). In EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking (2019)



## Other projects and links



There is an extension of Containernet called [vim-emu](https://github.com/containernet/vim-emu) which is a full-featured multi-PoP emulation platform for NFV scenarios. Vim-emu was developed as part of the [SONATA-NFV](http://www.sonata-nfv.eu) project and is now hosted by the [OpenSource MANO project](https://osm.etsi.org/):





    

        

    




For running Mininet or Containernet distributed in a cluster, checkout [Maxinet](http://maxinet.github.io).



You can also find an alternative/teaching-focused approach for Container-based Network Emulation by TU Dresden in [their repository](https://git.comnets.net/public-repo/comnetsemu).



## Contact



### Support



If you have any questions, please use GitHub's [issue system](https://github.com/containernet/containernet/issues).



### Contribute



Your contributions are very welcome! Please fork the GitHub repository and create a pull request.



Please make sure to test your code using



```bash

sudo make test

```



### Lead developer



Manuel Peuster



- Mail: 

- Twitter: [@ManuelPeuster](https://twitter.com/ManuelPeuster)

- GitHub: [@mpeuster](https://github.com/mpeuster)

- Website: [https://peuster.de](https://peuster.de)