Today I’m going to discuss about one of the most useful tools for Network engineers, which is : Mininet.This is the 1st part
Basically, Mininet creates a realistic virtual network, running real kernel, switch and application code, on a single machine (VM, cloud or native), in seconds, with a single command.
Mininet is a network emulator, or more accurately, an orchestration framework for network emulation. On a single Linux kernel, it operates a collection of end-hosts, switches, routers, and connections. It employs lightweight virtualization to make a single machine appear to be a full network, with the same kernel, operating system, and user code. You can ssh into a Mininet host (assuming you start up sshd and bridge the network to your host) and execute any software you want (including anything that is installed on the underlying Linux system.) Your programs may transmit packets over what seems to be a genuine Ethernet interface, with a set link speed and latency.
With a certain level of queueing, packets are handled by what appears to be a genuine Ethernet switch, router, or middlebox. When two applications interact through Mininet, such as an iperf client and server, the measured performance should be comparable to two (slower) native computers.
In brief, Mininet's virtual hosts, switches, connections, and controllers are real - they're simply made of software rather than hardware – and behave similarly to discrete hardware pieces for the most part. On any platform, it is typically feasible to construct a Mininet network that looks like a hardware network, or a hardware network that looks like a Mininet network, and run the same binary code and apps.
Install/Clone Mininet in your device to start using Mininet:
git clone git://github.com/mininet/mininet
This will create a folder “mininet” in the home directory. It contains the project file structure. After you have selected the version, use the install script provided in the mininet folder to install mininet. Do not change anything in the script. Run the script file to install mininet. This will install Mininet 2.2 as per the selected version
