physical nodes

When defining new node types, you can also specify the machine type. The default machine type is netns (for a Linux network namespace), and other options are xen and physical. (The xen machine type is only available on the Xen code branch -- more about that in a later post.) The physical machine type allows you to incorporate physical testbed machines into your emulated network.

There is a new default node type with a green icon named prouter, or physical router. You can define other node types that are physical nodes. When you link to a physical node, a GRE interface will be built on the real machine for that link, to tunnel data to/from the emulated network. Services will be started and stopped as defined in the service list. Double-clicking a physical node opens an SSH shell to that node.

Physical nodes must be assigned to a server just like emulation servers in a distributed session. The physical node should be running the cored.py daemon. The difference between a physical node and a distributed emulation server is that no virtual namespaces are created; processes run directly on the physical node without virtualization.