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Mininet 2.2.1 Release Notes

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lantz edited this page Apr 21, 2015 · 30 revisions
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Mininet 2.2.1 is primarily a performance enhancement and bug fix release to Mininet 2.2.0.

Debian and Raspberry Pi support

install.sh -fnv and install.sh -a now work out of the box on Raspbian/Debian 7.8 Wheezy, so you can easily install and run Mininet on a Raspberry Pi! You can also install OVS 2.3.1 using "install.sh -V 2.3.1".

API Changes

2.2.1 is compatible with the 2.0 API, but some minor changes have been made for performance or other reasons, and you should be aware of them since they could cause unexpected behavior.

  • links not added using addLink() will not be cleaned up automatically in Mininet.stop(). Note that sshd.py has changed slightly to reflect this. controlnet.py has also changed. The symptom you may observe is that links may be left in the root namespace. They may be deleted using mn -c or mininet.clean.cleanup()

  • printPid is now False by default in Node.cmd() and Node.sendCmd()

  • mininet.clean.cleanup() has been reorganized and now uses a class.

  • Some previously silent command failures may now cause exceptions due to using errRun rather than quietRun. If you encounter unexpected exceptions, you may wish to run with setLogLevel('debug') (or --v debug) to see what is going on.

  • As the Linux kernel matures, it becomes less necessary to have secondary checks as to whether an operation succeeded and try again (as seen with the infamous "gave up after 3 tries" messages) so these checks (and retries) are being removed. This may expose issues which were previously hidden on older Linux kernels.

  • The Ryu controller class is now named Ryu instead of RYU - the new name reflects the correct project name, which is not an acronym. The --controller ryu option is unchanged.

OVS Patch Links

An OVSLink (--link ovs) class has been added which implements OVS patch links. Unlike veth pairs, OVS Patch Links are virtual entities within OVS itself, and can potentially support much higher data rates (particularly over multiple links, probably due to OVS's flow rule optimization) as well as slightly faster startup time.

However, OVSLinks have several serious limitations, including the following:

  1. OVS patch ports are not real Linux interfaces, so you cannot monitor them using tcpdump or wireshark.

  2. OVS patch ports are not real Linux interfaces, so you cannot control their behavior using tc.

  3. Because of the above, OVSLink does not support link modeling including bandwidth limits, delay modeling, or loss modeling.

  4. Based on our experience so far, no more than ~64 OVSLinks should be used in a row. This means that a command like mn --topo linear,64 --test iperf will work, but mn --topo linear,80 --test iperf will fail.

That being said, if you want the fastest possible data rates on small-diameter networks, you may wish to try OVSLink. If it doesn't work, just go back to regular links.

Notable bug fixes

  • The CPqD switch should now build and install on Ubuntu 14.04
  • The CLI switch command has been fixed (though its precise semantics are still a bit obscure, as it currently causes a switch to stop or start forwarding packets while leaving its interfaces up)
  • Repeatedly invoking the CLI will not cause .mininet_history to double in size (thanks to Rich Lane.)

Other minor changes

  • You may now specify multiple --controller arguments to mn

  • RemoteController and --controller remote now accept strings of the form IP:port where IP is the remote controller IP address and port is the port.

  • mn --help and the man page for mn now list the class names for --host, --switch, and --controller options. The classes themselves, along with their options, are documented on http://api.mininet.org . We hope to improve the documentation over time.

Errata

Please consult the Mininet 2.2.0 Release Notes#errata.

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