Abstract:

Since network simulation consumes a lot of system resources and has complex parameter configuration, these factors will affect the test accuracy when performing network testing. Therefore, a lightweight network simulation method based on Linux namespace is designed. Based on Linux kernel virtualization technology, a simulation network is built. In order to solve the problem of complex parameter configuration caused by dynamic adjustment of topology during network testing and high resource consumption when running network simulation system, human-readable data serialization standard file is used to flexibly define the network, and completes the virtual network creation by calling system commands in user state with the help of Linux network namespace mechanism. An automated script is written to perform network testing using iperf3 tool. Experimental results show that the network throughput of the proposed method is close to the test theoretical bandwidth, the system shows high startup efficiency and low running resource overhead, can meet common network testing application scenarios, has good performance, and has certain research value.

Key words: network simulation, virtual network, Linux namespace, automated testingmininet