Reproducible network experiments using container-based emulation

  • Authors:

  • Nikhil Handigol;Brandon Heller;Vimalkumar Jeyakumar;Bob Lantz;Nick McKeown

  • Affiliations:

  • Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA;Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA;Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA;Open Networking Laboratory, Palo Alto, CA, USA;Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Emerging networking experiments and technologies
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

In an ideal world, all research papers would be runnable: simply click to replicate all results, using the same setup as the authors. One approach to enable runnable network systems papers is Container-Based Emulation (CBE), where an environment of virtual hosts, switches, and links runs on a modern multicore server, using real application and kernel code with software-emulated network elements. CBE combines many of the best features of software simulators and hardware testbeds, but its performance fidelity is unproven. In this paper, we put CBE to the test, using our prototype, Mininet-HiFi, to reproduce key results from published network experiments such as DCTCP, Hedera, and router buffer sizing. We report lessons learned from a graduate networking class at Stanford, where 37 students used our platform to replicate 18 published results of their own choosing. Our experiences suggest that CBE makes research results easier to reproduce and build upon.