-

Overview

- -

Containernet is a fork of the famous Mininet network emulator and allows to use Docker containers as hosts in the emulated network topologies. This enables interesting functionalities to build networking/cloud emulators and testbeds. One example for this is the NFV multi-PoP infrastructure emulator created by the SONATA project.

- -

Containernet in action

- - - -

Cite this work

- -

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

- - - -

Get started

- -

Using Containernet is very similar to using Mininet with custom topologies.

- -

Create a custom topology

- -

First, a Python-based topology has to be created as shown in the following example.

- -
"""
-Example topology with two containers (d1, d2),
-two switches, and one controller:
-
-          - (c)-
-         |      |
-(d1) - (s1) - (s2) - (d2)
-"""
-from mininet.net import Containernet
-from mininet.node import Controller
-from mininet.cli import CLI
-from mininet.link import TCLink
-from mininet.log import info, setLogLevel
-setLogLevel('info')
-
-net = Containernet(controller=Controller)
-info('*** Adding controller\n')
-net.addController('c0')
-info('*** Adding docker containers using ubuntu:trusty images\n')
-d1 = net.addDocker('d1', ip='10.0.0.251', dimage="ubuntu:trusty")
-d2 = net.addDocker('d2', ip='10.0.0.252', dimage="ubuntu:trusty")
-info('*** Adding switches\n')
-s1 = net.addSwitch('s1')
-s2 = net.addSwitch('s2')
-info('*** Creating links\n')
-net.addLink(d1, s1)
-net.addLink(s1, s2, cls=TCLink, delay='100ms', bw=1)
-net.addLink(s2, d2)
-info('*** Starting network\n')
-net.start()
-info('*** Testing connectivity\n')
-net.ping([d1, d2])
-info('*** Running CLI\n')
-CLI(net)
-info('*** Stopping network')
-net.stop()
-
-
- -

You can find this topology in containernet/examples/containernet_example.py.

- -

Run emulation and interact with containers

- -

Containernet requires root access to configure the emulated network described by the topology script:

- -
sudo python containernet_example.py
-
-
- -

After launching the emulated network, you can interact with the involved containers through Mininet’s interactive CLI as shown with the ping command in the following example:

- -
containernet> d1 ping -c3 d2
-PING 10.0.0.252 (10.0.0.252) 56(84) bytes of data.
-64 bytes from 10.0.0.252: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=200 ms
-64 bytes from 10.0.0.252: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=200 ms
-64 bytes from 10.0.0.252: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=200 ms
-
---- 10.0.0.252 ping statistics ---
-3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2002ms
-rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 200.162/200.316/200.621/0.424 ms
-containernet>
-
-
- -

To stop the emulation, do:

- -
containernet> exit
-
-
- -

Installation

- -

Automatic installation is provided using an Ansible playbook. Requires a bare-metal machine or VM with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

- -
sudo apt-get install ansible git aptitude
-git clone https://github.com/containernet/containernet.git
-cd containernet/ansible
-sudo ansible-playbook -i "localhost," -c local install.yml
-
-
- -

References

- -

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

- -

Publications

- - - - - - - -

Contact

- -

Support

-

If you have any questions, please use GitHub’s issue system or Containernet’s Gitter channel to get in touch.

- -

Contribute

-

Your contributions are very welcome! Please fork the GitHub repository and create a pull request. We use Travis-CI to automatically test new commits.

- -

Lead developer

- -

Manuel Peuster

- - - - -