mininet VS core

mininet [1] can be used to emulate networks on a single computer. It is used to teach networking concepts.

1. https://github.com/mininet/mininet

You can learn routing even on a host in Linux with iptables as well as Linux network namespaces via mini net http://mininet.org/ etc. once you’re comfortable there you can start looking at docker networking and also frr as well as gns3 or eve-ng running virtualized routers.

Or instead of using Docker, you can also get a Mininet VM, (optionally) install a desktop environment on it and create any manner of network configurations to tinker with, and use Wireshark to analyse traffic.

You can learn BGP with mininet: https://mininet.org/

You can simulate arbitrarily large networks and internetworks with this, provided you have the hardware to run a large enough number of virtual appliances, but they are pretty lightweight.

Ubuntu https://github.com/mininet/mininet/releases/

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.