core VS mn-wifi-ebook

CORE has been updated twice since the list was created. It’s actively maintained. CORE emulates mobile, changing networks like IoT devices, phones, or network-connected vehicles.

GitHub - https://github.com/coreemu/core

Community Discord - https://discord.gg/AKd7kmP

CORE: https://github.com/coreemu/core 3 The Common Open Research Emulator (CORE) is a tool for emulating networks on one or more machines. You can connect these emulated networks to live networks. CORE consists of a GUI for drawing topologies of lightweight virtual machines, and Python modules for scripting network emulation.

A quick look (by searching for bgp) suggests that this handles the upper layers, but doesn't try to simulate some of the deeper layers of a network such as bgp. Which something that emulators like core can do [0].

0. https://github.com/coreemu/core.

Brian Linkletter's website is one of the best portal if you want to learn network simulation and emulation.

From the provided list, I think the most promising and realistic open source network simulator and emulator is Mininet due to its lightweight approach capable of running off-the-shelf Linux OS and software. In addition it has thriving eco-system that made it unique, accessible and prime for wide adoption for examples:

a) It's currently actively being used to simulate and emulate smart city project by its original author to improve urban networking [1].

b) It has open learning materials resources from open source book (Mininet-WiFi) and open lab instruction (Mininet-SDN) [2],[3].

c) It has the lightweight feature enabling it to simulate very large number of nodes using the nested container capability as demonstrated by extensions created by third party simulation tools namely NestedNet and ComNetsEmu [4],[5],[6],[7].

[1] SigComm 2022 Cosmos Testbed Tutorial:

https://wiki.cosmos-lab.org/wiki/Workshops/SigComm2022

[2] Mininet Wi-Fi book:

https://github.com/ramonfontes/mn-wifi-ebook

[3] SDN Labs using Mininet manual:

http://ce.sc.edu/cyberinfra/workshops/Material/SDN/SDN_Labs....

[4] Network Virtualization and Emulation using Docker, OpenvSwitch and Mininet-based Link Emulation:

https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/985/

[5] NestedNet: A Container-based Prototyping Tool for Hierarchical Software Defined Networks:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9244858

[6] ComNetsEmu: A Lightweight Emulator:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B97801...

[7] A virtual emulator/testbed designed for the book: Computing in Communication Networks: From Theory to Practice (2020):

https://git.comnets.net/public-repo/comnetsemu