[Xorp-users] Emulating multiple routers on the same host

[Ratul Mahajan]

 > You can currently run multiple BGP instances on the same machine, as
 > BGP uses TCP, and you can configure the peer address and port on a
 > per-peer basis.  So if you want to experiment with BGP, this is
 > possible without code changes.  But the resulting virtual routers
 > won't actually forward packets to each other, so this is only useful
 > for routing experiments, not a general solution.

so whats the simplest way to accomplish this?

(i realize that the answer is there somewhere in the code/docs but 
specific pointers would help.)

thanks.

Mark Handley wrote:

 >> The XORP Vision page mentions the ability to emulate multiple 
routers on the same host, saying this can be done if you modify the FEA. 
  My question is how do you modify the FEA to do this?  Do you have to 
hack code, or can this be done by configuration?
 >
 >
 >
 > Right now you'd have to hack code for it to be general.  You could run
 > multiple dummy FEA processes (each with its own finder and routing
 > protocols) but there would be no way to exchange routing packets
 > between the different virtual routers.
 > As part of a project to implement IS-IS in XORP, I have a student who
 > is looking to test his implementation by emulating multiple routers,
 > so we've given some thought to how to make this work (but he was only
 > looking at IS-IS).  But right now, there's no code committed into CVS
 > to do this.
 >
 > You can currently run multiple BGP instances on the same machine, as
 > BGP uses TCP, and you can configure the peer address and port on a
 > per-peer basis.  So if you want to experiment with BGP, this is
 > possible without code changes.  But the resulting virtual routers
 > won't actually forward packets to each other, so this is only useful
 > for routing experiments, not a general solution.
 >
 >  - Mark