Remote Network Emulator

The RemoteNetworkEmulator is the Remote Representation of the WattsonNetworkEmulator.

It allows entities, e.g., the User or custom components, to interact with the running network emulation, retrieve its state and manipulate its behavior. The implementation is available here.

It provides a set of Getters for network entities, e.g., hosts, switches or links. All returned entities are instances of the RemoteNetworkEntity class, e.g., a RemoteNetworkHost. They then offer an interface following the default NetworkEntity, e.g., the WattsonNetworkHost.

Instantiating the RemoteNetworkEmulator

from wattson.cosimulation.control.interface.wattson_client import WattsonClient
from wattson.cosimulation.simulators.network.remote_network_emulator import RemoteNetworkEmulator

# Create client and connect
wattson_client = WattsonClient(wattson_socket_ip="10.0.0.1", name="custom-client")

wattson_client.require_connection()
wattson_client.register()

# Create the RemoteNetworkEmulator
remote_network_emulator = RemoteNetworkEmulator(wattson_client=wattson_client)

Listing Entities

# Get all Network Nodes
nodes: List[RemoteNetworkNode] = remote_network_emulator.get_nodes()
## Get all hosts
hosts: List[RemoteNetworkHost] = remote_network_emulator.get_hosts()
## Get all routers
routers: List[RemoteNetworkRouter] = remote_network_emulator.get_routers()
## Get all switches
switches: List[RemoteNetworkSwitch] = remote_network_emulator.get_switches()
# Get all Network Links
links: List[RemoteNetworkLink] = remote_network_emulator.get_links()
# Get all Interfacesfind_nodes_by_ip_address
interfaces: List[RemoteNetworkInterface] = remote_network_emulator.get_interfaces()

# Get all entities (nodes + links + interfaces)
entities: List[RemoteNetworkEntity] = remote_network_emulator.get_entities()

# List all entity IDs of nodes
for node in nodes:
    print(node.entity_id)

Getting individual Entities

Each Network Entity has a unique entity ID. It allows to address each entity by a string.

from wattson.cosimulation.exceptions import NetworkNodeNotFoundException

try:
    host1: RemoteNetworkHost = remote_network_emulator.get_host(host="hostId")
except NetworkNodeNotFoundException:
    print("Host not found")

# You can also search for hosts by a role
firewalls: List[RemoteNetworkNode] = remote_network_emulator.find_nodes_by_role(role="firewall")
# ... or by IP address
host_by_ip: List[RemoteNetworkNode] = remote_network_emulator.find_node_by_ip(ip="172.16.2.1")

Creating a new Host

Creating a new host via the RemoteNetworkEmulator follows a slightly different process compared to the default NetworkEmulator.

Instead of creating a Host object and pass it to the emulator, the creation process follows a procedural approach since to ensure that each RemoteNetworkHost has a corresponding NetworkHost.

# Arguments are passed to the constructor of the NetworkHost.
# The config is set as the host configuration.
# The entity_id must not exists!
host: RemoteNetworkHost = remote_network_emulator.create_host(entity_id="new-host", arguments=[], config={})

# Create a new switch
switch: RemoteNetworkSwitch = remote_network_emulator.create_switch(entity_id="new-switch")

# Connect both nodes and set an IP address for the host
interface_a, link, interface_b = remote_network_emulator.connect_nodes(
    node_a=host,
    node_b=switch,
    interface_a_options={"ip": "172.16.2.1", prefix_length=24}
    interface_b_options={},
    link_options={},
)

Starting a Remote Process