Piconet is Mininet clone.

I wanted to use Open vSwitch which at the time of writing
is not available out of box with mininet.

So to create a better alternative this is my first try to create a base.

So here is how to use Piconet.

Install the following: python2.6, openvswitch, and bridge-utils

bridge-utils and Open vSwitch have conflicts at runtime. They use kernel
modules which conflict.

Use "modprobe bridge" to load up the bridge kernel module. To use the Linux
bridge L2 switch module there is no need for any extra configuration. Although
on my system the L2 switches take some time before they start forwarding
packets; so try to stay calm if you don't see ping packets for a couple of
minutes; then really panic.

To use Open vSwitch, setup the system as mentioned in its installation manual
INSTALL.Linux. The Piconet Open vSwitch module uses ovs-vsctl for everything.

I don't really use ssl because most of the stuff is expected to be running on a
single system. I use the following commands to get ovs-vswitchd started.

ovsdb-server /usr/local/etc/openvswitch/conf.db \
	--remote=punix:/usr/local/var/run/openvswitch/db.sock \
	--pidfile --detach

ovs-vswitchd unix:/usr/local/var/run/openvswitch/db.sock \
	--pidfile --detach

The next step I think would be to add topology generators for Piconet. I don't
think I am going to add support for a Mininet like shell. Currently to drop
into an interactive shell one can use the code module of python. I generally
write the initialization script and execute it with ipython's %run.

After the topology generator I will to write a X forwarder to support
independent shells. I have quite a dislike for Mininet's screen hack.

This is aimed to be a very concise piece of software. So to learn more read
the code. To give a quick start; we use multiprocessing module to create
easily communicate able python processes which then unshare their network
namespace and keep executing commands sent to them.

Checkout scratchnet.py for a minimal setup.