+This software was originally developed by the [SONATA project](http://www.sonata-nfv.eu), funded by the European Commission under grant number 671517 through the Horizon 2020 and 5G-PPP programs.
+
+### Cite this work
+
+If you use the emulation platform for your research and/or other publications, please cite the following paper to reference our work:
+
+* 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)
+
+## Installation
+
+There are multiple ways to install and use the emulation platform. The easiest way is the automated installation using the OSM installer. The bare-metal installation requires a freshly installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and is done by an ansible playbook. Another option is to use a nested Docker environment to run the emulator inside a Docker container.
+
+### Automated installation (recommended)
+
+```sh
+./install_osm.sh --lxdimages --vimemu
+```
+
+This command will install OSM (as LXC containers) as well as the emulator (as a Docker container) on a local machine. It is recommended to use a machine with Ubuntu 16.04.
+
+### Manual installation
+
+#### Option 1: Bare-metal installation
+
+```sh
+sudo apt-get install ansible git aptitude
+```
+
+##### Step 1. Containernet installation
+
+```sh
+cd
+git clone https://github.com/containernet/containernet.git
+cd ~/containernet/ansible
+sudo ansible-playbook -i "localhost," -c local install.yml
+```
+
+##### Step 2. vim-emu installation
+
+```sh
+cd
+git clone https://osm.etsi.org/gerrit/osm/vim-emu.git
+cd ~/vim-emu/ansible
+sudo ansible-playbook -i "localhost," -c local install.yml
+```
+
+#### Option 2: Nested Docker Deployment
+This option requires a Docker installation on the host machine on which the emulator should be deployed.
+
+```sh
+git clone https://osm.etsi.org/gerrit/osm/vim-emu.git</code>
+cd ~/vim-emu</code>
+# build the container:
+docker build -t vim-emu-img .
+# run the (interactive) container:
+docker run --name vim-emu -it --rm --privileged --pid='host' -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock vim-emu-img /bin/bash
+```
+
+
+## Usage
+
+### Example
+
+This simple example shows how to start the emulator with a simple topology (terminal 1) and how to start (terminal 2) some empty VNF containers in the emulated datacenters (PoPs) by using the vim-emu CLI.
+
+* First terminal (start the emulation platform):
+ * `sudo python examples/default_single_dc_topology.py`
+* Second terminal (use `docker exec vim-emu <command>` for nested Docker deployment):
+ * `vim-emu compute start -d dc1 -n vnf1`
+ * `vim-emu compute start -d dc1 -n vnf2`
+ * `vim-emu compute list`
+* First terminal:
+ * `containernet> vnf1 ifconfig`
+ * `containernet> vnf1 ping -c 2 vnf2`
+
+A more advanced example that includes OSM can be found in the [official vim-emu documentation in the OSM wiki](https://osm.etsi.org/wikipub/index.php/VIM_emulator).
+
+### Further documentation and useful links
+
+* [Official vim-emu documentation in the OSM wiki](https://osm.etsi.org/wikipub/index.php/VIM_emulator)
+* [Full CLI command documentation](https://github.com/sonata-nfv/son-emu/wiki/CLI-Command-Overview)
+* [Requirements for Docker containers executed by the emulator](https://github.com/sonata-nfv/son-emu/wiki/Container-Requirements)
+* [REST API](https://github.com/sonata-nfv/son-emu/wiki/APIs)
+* [Mininet](http://mininet.org)
+* [Containernet](https://containernet.github.io)
+* [Maxinet](https://maxinet.github.io)
+
+## Development
+
+### How to contribute?
+
+Please check [this OSM wiki page](https://osm.etsi.org/wikipub/index.php/Workflow_with_OSM_tools) to learn how to contribute to a OSM module.
+
+### Testing
+
+To run the unit tests do:
+
+* `cd ~/vim-emu`
+* `sudo pytest -v`
+* (To force Python2: `sudo python2 -m pytest -v`)
+
+## Seed code contributors:
+
+### Lead:
+
+* Manuel Peuster (https://github.com/mpeuster)
+* Steven Van Rossem (https://github.com/stevenvanrossem)
+
+### Contributors
+
+* Hadi Razzaghi Kouchaksaraei (https://github.com/hadik3r)
+* Wouter Tavernier (https://github.com/wtaverni)
+* Geoffroy Chollon (https://github.com/cgeoffroy)
+* Eduard Maas (https://github.com/edmaas)
+* Malte Splietker (https://github.com/splietker)
+* Johannes Kampmeyer (https://github.com/xschlef)
+* Stefan Schneider (https://github.com/StefanUPB)
+
+## License
+
+The emulation platform is published under Apache 2.0 license. Please see the LICENSE file for more details.
+
+## Contact
+
+Manuel Peuster (Paderborn University) <manuel@peuster.de>