Canned Emulab

Due date

Introduction

In this lab you will obtain a user account on Emulab and create a simple network.  This lab is meant as an introduction to the process of creating and executing a network within the Emulab world. In later labs Emulab will be used  to prototype network architectures and to experiment with network performance.

Goals

• To get you involved with an emulation environment that supports the development of networking.  When designing a new network, it is difficult to acquire all the hardware and software.  Also, performance and other networking issues can be investigate prior to building the network.
• To do a controlled pass through creating and exercising a network within the Emulab.

Acknowledgments

This lab is to complete the Emulab Tutorial.

References

• Emulab
• Emulab FAQ
  

Logistics

Each student should complete this assignment individually so that everyone has their own Emulab login and environment.

Assignment

1. Go to Join Emulab project: CSC364-2012S and register for an account. You will receive an email when you are approved as an Emulab user.
   
   
2. In the meantime, look over the FAQ to know what sorts of answers you can find there when you have a question. Pay particular attention to the "Using the Testbed," and "Troubleshooting" sections.
   
   
3. Work your way through the Emulab Tutorial. Stop when you get to "Advanced Topics" and terminate your experiment, if you haven't already. Some notes on what to put in your lab notebook:
   
   
   • Although the ns code was given to you, I want you to add it to your lab notebook. It is a good habit to make a record of your "experimental apparatus."
     
   • After you've created your experiment, go to "Experiment List" and select your experiment. From here, copy the table of reserved nodes into your lab notebook.
   • Also add the picture of the network topology to your lab notebook. To do this, save the image to your computer and then attach it to the wiki page.
     
   • When you reach the section on "Using your nodes", ssh into nodeA and type "ping nodeB".  After a few seconds of output, hit Ctrl-C to stop the ping program. Copy the contents of your terminal (from ssh'ing in to the ping program) and paste into your lab notebook. This is your proof that you successfully completed the tutorial!
     

Advice

Choose an experiment name that has your name in it so that it does not conflict with experiments belonging to others in the class.

Syntax check your ns file before starting your experiment.

Emulab is a shared resource used by many schools and research labs. Thus, for future exercises, you might have to schedule your time to ensure that you can get sufficient resources.

Lab Notebook

The basic format of lab reports will be to include a header with the lab title, your name, and the date. Margins, fonts, and anything else aren't terribly important as long as I can read it. I will specify what needs to be included in the report in each lab, and there will also be discussion questions to answer for each lab. Include your answers  to the discussion questions in their own section at the end of the report.

This particular report is fairly simple. The assignment above indicates what to include. Please add enough text to make it clear what is what, but you don't need to write up long descriptions.

Besides copying and pasting HTML or plain text, attaching screenshots can be a useful way to get things into your notebook.

To answer discussion questions, you can select the question from the assignment web page and copy to your wiki page.

Discussion Questions

Note that I will often expect you to do a bit of casual research (usually using the lab references or the Web) to answer discussion questions.

Grading

Finish the lab for full credit. If you don't do this, then some of the later labs will be really difficult.

Janet Davis (davisjan@cs.grinnell.edu) and Mike Erlinger (mike@cs.hmc.edu)