Mininet + ROS 2 demonstration

Dockerfile with examples running ROS 2 nodes on emulated hosts. Potentially useful for testing and benchmarking ROS 2 communication between multiple hosts under different network contraints and topologies.

Run demos with Docker (Ubuntu)

Start a Docker container with the --privileged option. Ensure the Docker image is using the same version of Ubuntu as your local host.

Host OS	Docker image
Ubuntu 18.04	jacobperron/mininet_ros_demo:eloquent
Ubuntu 20.04	jacobperron/mininet_ros_demo:foxy

docker run -it --privileged jacobperron/mininet_ros_demo:eloquent

Run the demos with python3.

Vanilla mininet demo:

python3 demos/mininet_demo.py

ROS talker/listener demo:

python3 demos/mininet_ros_demo.py

ROS performance test demo:

# Provide --help option for usage
python3 demos/mininet_ros_perf_demo.py

Run demos without Docker

1. Install mininet

• Ubuntu 18.04

  sudo apt install mininet
  sudo apt install openvswitch-testcontroller
  pip3 install git+https://github.com/mininet/mininet.git
  

• Ubuntu 20.04

  # Install mininet from source (use at own risk)
  git clone http://github.com/mininet/mininet.git
  cd mininet
  util/install.sh -fnv
  

2. Clone this repository

   git clone https://github.com/jacobperron/mininet_ros_demos.git

3. Run the demos with Python 3, for example

   python3 mininet_ros_demos/demos/mininet_ros_demo.py

Troubleshooting

Seems that after installing the test controller, we see an exception looking like:

Exception: Please shut down the controller which is running on port 6653:

To resolve, we can shut it down with the following command (replacing port number with the same from the exception message):

sudo fuser -k 6633/tcp

Reference