Investigating the possibility of speeding up Mininet by using Netmap, an alternative Linux packet I/O framework

A new networking paradigm known as software-defined networking (SDN) is making managing IP networks easier. As adoption of the paradigm increases, there is an increasing need to adapt existing applications to work with it, and to invent new functionality that was previously not possible. One of the most commonly used tools for testing SDN applications is Mininet, an SDN emulator that uses Linux process groups, CPU bandwidth isolation and network namespaces combined with with link schedulers and virtual Ethernet links to form a virtualized network system. Mininet is designed to run on a single system and resource constraints can be an issue when emulating certain network topologies. The case study looks at the possibility of using Netmap, a framework to give user space applications very fast access to network packets, in order to improve Mininet performance. Due to the lack of a TCP/IP stack in Netmap and the increased complexity that the framework brings, introducing it into Mininet would require a large effort for a possible bandwidth throughput increase of ca. 40%. The study concludes that Netmap is not designed for a use case such as Mininet’s and not worth the effort required to introduce it.