VINI is a virtual network infrastructure that allows network researchers to evaluate their protocols and services in a realistic environment, with a high degree of control over network conditions. VINI allows researchers to deploy and evaluate their ideas with real routing software, traffic loads, and network events. To provide researchers flexibility in designing their experiments, VINI supports simultaneous experiments with arbitrary network topologies on a shared physical infrastructure.
Network virtualization provides a powerful way to run multiple networks, each customized to a specific purpose, at the same time over a shared substrate. VINI research on network virtualization focuses on two main scenarios. First, it considers the role of virtualization in running multiple experiments simultaneously in a shared experimental facility. For example, the NSF GENI initiative focuses on the design and deployment of a shared, wide-area experimental facility to support a wide range of research in networking and distributed systems. The VINI project is a step in that direction, supporting experimentation with new routing, forwarding, and addressing schemes on a shared facility built on top on general-purpose processors. Second, VINI considers the role of virtualization to support multiple architectures simultaneously as a long-term solution for the future Internet. The Cabo project explores the benefits of running customized architectures, as well as how a virtualized system enables an economic refactoring of a future Internet into infrastructure providers (that own and operate the equipment) and service providers (who lease virtual components and offer end-to-end services to users). These projects grapple with the technical challenges of providing a virtualized, programmable substrate that operates at high speed; the Cabo project must address the additional challenges of building a substrate that can operate without any dependency on the existing Internet.
Project PlanetLab hosts VINI documentation. VINI adds Layer 2 virtual networks to PlanetLab slices.
Note: While this application does not use TransLight/StarLight, it leverages CESNET’s investment in transatlantic networking. CESNET connects to VINI via a lightpath from Prague to Amsterdam to Chicago.
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Collaborators – VINI consists of 37 nodes at 22 sites connected to:
USA:
National LambdaRail; Internet2
Czech Republic:
CESNET
