Network in a box

VNEC (Virtual Network Experiment Controller) is an open source tool for specifying and executing network experiments in a virtual environment. The user first describes the network topology, and then provides the tasks that should be performed by the hosts, together with their execution order. Next, VNEC initializes the environment by configuring and powering on the corresponding virtual machines to match the desired network topology. Finally, commands are dispatched to the proper virtual machines in the specified order. VNEC can hence be used for many types of network experiments. This paper presents the architecture of VNEC and discusses its implementation.