FreeRouter in a Nutshell: A "Protocoland" routing platform for Open and Portable Carrier-Class Testbeds

Abstract

An Open Source routing platform that uses a disaggregated model fully populated with carrier-class implementation of network protocols is discussed here. FreeRouter's architecture allows portability from emulated to testbed experiments (and on different hardware targets) is briefly explained. In order to demonstrate its ease of use, installation and entry-level examples are provided.

Prototipação de Solução de Roteamento de Fonte para Suporte à Engenharia de Tráfego em Ciência de Dados Intensiva

“…O RARE/freeRtr é um software de controle de rede, usa sockets UDP e suporta protocolos tradicionais e novos, como o PolKA [Borges et al 2022a]. Pode ser usado para emular redes ou como plano de controle para dispositivos de hardware, e suporta diferentes plano de dados, como DPDK e P4.…”

FABRIC Testbed from the Eyes of a Network Researcher

“…Figure 2 shows the FABRIC testbed topology with a diversity of links in terms of capacity, propagation delays and multiplicity of paths. Therefore, it is a natural step forward to extend our previous work [Borges et al 2022b], deploying routing protocols in order to experiment different levels of network programmability at a national-scale testbed by using the "metaresearch" provided in FABRIC framework.…”

“…Experiments involving networks are difficult to run and depend on the testbed's architecture and tools [Borges et al 2022b]. Moreover, performing real-world experiments is considered a prerequisite for a true validation of a protocol, and it requires both repeatability and reproducibility.…”