[Xorp-users] Simulation with several routers on one machine

[Orion Hodson]

On Apr 19, 2004, at 05:56, Xavier Brouckaert wrote:

> Is it possible to simulate a topology using a single machine in XORP ?

Yes, it should be.  We've not done this ourselves (yet!), but are very 
interested in this as a development and testing path.

> Is User-Mode Linux required ?

User-Mode Linux is an option, as might be VMWare and it's kin.

There's also Marko Zec's virtualized network stack for FreeBSD 
(http://www.tel.fer.hr/zec/BSD/vimage/) which AFAIK is lighterweight 
because it has less VM work to do.

> Has someone already done that before ?  Is there documentation about 
> it?
> If so, how many nodes can be simulated ? (How much memory does an
> average XORP router take ?)

We're not aware of anyone doing this with XORP, but would love to see 
it happen.  We're largely tied up with the release right now, but if 
you start out down this path and hit problems, we'll do what we can 
help address them.

The memory consumption of XORP really depends on what is being run.   
XORP with a full BGP feed is in the realm of 150MB.  O(10) instances is 
probably a reasonable estimate.  Beyond O(10) expect problems with 
keeping up in real-time.  This might require changes inside XORP to run 
in slow-motion.

	Orion