This is the repository of SONATA's emulation platform.

This emulation platform was created to support network service developers to locally prototype and test complete network service chains in realistic end-to-end multi-PoP scenarios. It allows the execution of real network functions, packaged as Docker containers, in emulated network topologies running locally on the network service developer's machine.

If you use son-emu for your research and/or other publications, please cite the following paper to reference our work:

• M. Peuster, H. Karl and S. van Rossem, "MeDICINE: Rapid prototyping of production-ready network services in multi-PoP environments," 2016 IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), Palo Alto, CA, USA, 2016, pp. 148-153. doi: 10.1109/NFV-SDN.2016.7919490
  • Link: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7919490/
  • Pre-print: http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.05995

A short demo that showcases son-emu together with its dummy gatekeeper is available here.

To install the emulator package in development mode, do:

• python setup.py develop

• ansible Install scripts
• misc Example packages and VNFs
• src
  • emuvim Emulator components
    • api API endpoint implementations
      • rest REST API for son-emu-cli
      • sonata Dummy gatekeeper API
      • openstack OpenStack-like APIs for MANO integration
    • cli Command line client to control the emulator
    • dashboard A web-based dashboard to display the emulator's state
    • dcemulator Emulator core
      • resourcemodel Resource limitation models
    • examples Example topology scripts
    • test Test scripts
• utils Helper scripts for SONATA's CI/CD setup

• cd ~/son-emu
• sudo py.test -v src/emuvim/test/unittests (To force using Python2: python2 -m pytest -v src/emuvim/test/unittests)

Son-emu is entirely written in Python and does not require a special build process. Please check the Installation section for more details about the installation of son-emu.

Son-emu requires the latest version of Containernet to be installed on the system.

Despite of this son-emu has the following dependencies:

• argparse >= 1.4.0 (Python software foundation License)
• docker-py == 1.7.1(Apache 2.0)
• Flask >= 0.11 (BSD)
• flask_restful >= 0.3 (BSD)
• networkx >= 1.11 (BSD)
• oslo.config >= 3.9.0 (Apache 2.0)
• prometheus_client >= 0.0.13 (Apache 2.0)
• pyaml >=15.8.2 (WTFPL)
• pytest-runner >= 2.8 (MIT)
• pytest >= 2.9 (MIT)
• requests >= 2.10 (Apache 2.0)
• ryu >= 4.4 (Apache 2.0)
• six >=1.9 (MIT)
• tabulate >= 0.7.5 (public domain)
• urllib3 >= 1.15 (MIT)
• zerorpc >= 0.5.2 (MIT)

Contributing to the son-emu is really easy. You must:

1. Clone this repository;
2. Work on your proposed changes, preferably through submiting issues;
3. Submit a Pull Request;
4. Follow/answer related issues (see Feedback-Chanel, below).

There are two ways to install and use son-emu. The simple one is to use Vagrant to create a VirtualBox-based VM on your machine that contains the pre-installed and configured emulator. The more complicated installation requires a freshly installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and is done by a ansible playbook.

• Request VirtualBox and Vagrant to be installed on the system.
• git clone https://github.com/sonata-nfv/son-emu.git
• cd ~/son-emu
• vagrant up
• vagrant ssh to enter the new VM in which the emulator is installed.

Follow the MOTD in the VM to run the example topology and the dummy-gatekeeper. The dummy-gatekeeper's default port 5000 is forwarded to the host machine and can be accessed from it by using, e.g., curl http://127.0.0.1:5000/packages.

• Requires: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
• sudo apt-get install ansible git aptitude
• sudo vim /etc/ansible/hosts
• Add: localhost ansible_connection=local

• cd
• git clone https://github.com/containernet/containernet.git
• cd ~/containernet/ansible
• sudo ansible-playbook install.yml
• Wait (and have a coffee) ...

• cd
• git clone https://github.com/sonata-nfv/son-emu.git
• cd ~/son-emu/ansible
• sudo ansible-playbook install.yml

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 son-emu-cli.

• First terminal (start the emulation platform):
• sudo python src/emuvim/examples/simple_topology.py
• Second terminal:
• son-emu-cli compute start -d datacenter1 -n vnf1
• son-emu-cli compute start -d datacenter1 -n vnf2
• son-emu-cli compute list
• First terminal:
• containernet> vnf1 ifconfig
• containernet> vnf1 ping -c 2 vnf2

• Full CLI command documentation
• Requirements for Docker containers executed by the emulator
• REST API

Son-emu is published under Apache 2.0 license. Please see the LICENSE file for more details.

• Mininet

The following lead developers are responsible for this repository and have admin rights. They can, for example, merge pull requests.

• Manuel Peuster (https://github.com/mpeuster)
• Steven Van Rossem (https://github.com/stevenvanrossem)

• 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)

• You may use the mailing list [email protected]
• GitHub issues