[Ns-developers] GSoC Virtual NetDevices

[Gustavo Carneiro]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 1:33 PM, Milton <milton at lrc.ic.unicamp.br> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 03:21, Tom Henderson <tomh at tomh.org> wrote:
>
> > On 3/30/10 12:45 PM, Milton wrote:
> >
> >> Hi, everyone.
> >>
> >> I'm interested on the project of virtual network devices for NS3. I'm
> >> working on simulation of virtual networks and with this I can create the
> >> virtual links, I guess. The next step would be make virtual nodes.
> >>
> >> Someone have more information about this project? It already has
> mentors?
> >>
> >
> > Can you be more specific?  Such a project is not listed on our project
> > ideas page.
> >
>
> Ok. I entered by mistake in the GSoC projects 2009 (
> http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/GSOC2009Projects) and saw this project
>
> *Virtual NetDevices.* Virtual devices are network interfaces that are
> > treated like any other device by the operating system, but do not
> actually
> > correspond to hardware. These are important to provide features such as
> > tunneling overlays for tasks such as VPNs and IPv6--IPv4 traversal, or
> > capabilities such as 802.1q VLAN tagging. For instance, the IRTF Routing
> > Research Group<
> http://trac.tools.ietf.org/group/irtf/trac/wiki/RoutingResearchGroup>seems
> likely to suggest a so-called map-and-encaps architecture for helping
> > the global core routing scalability problem. This project would help
> define
> > and implement an architecture for incorporating virtual devices into
> ns-3,
> > and develop a few concrete instances of these devices, such as
> > Ipv6-over-IPv4, VLANs, or providing multiple addresses per physical
> > interface for routers to leverage.
> >
> >    - *Required Experience:*
> >    - *Bonus Experience:* IPv6, QoS
> >    - *Interests:* IPv6, QoS, tunneling, virtualization
> >
> > there's no more interest in it or has been done yet?
>

There is some work done. NS-3 now has a VirtualNetDevice class which can be
used as building block for virtual interfaces, tunnels, etc.

Concrete applications of the virtual netdevices I guess is still left to be
explored.  I have done (privately) some simulations with
IPv4-over-GTP-over-UDP-over-IPv4 tunneling, for instance.  I think many more
applications of tunneling are left to be implemented, such as Mobile IP,
GRE, VPNs, etc.

-- 
Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro
INESC Porto, UTM, WiN, http://win.inescporto.pt/gjc
"The universe is always one step beyond logic." -- Frank Herbert