DNS, BGP policy functionality

[Niklas]

Hi autonetkit community,

First of all, thx for this awesome piece of software! To see a network
be created from something as simple as a graph is just mind blowing.

I was playing with autonetkit for some while when I found notes
mentioning inbuilt dns and bgp policy functionality. Both however
appear nowhere in the documentation?! In the source they are described
as work-in-progress.

Could sb tell me please how usable these functions are by now?

-- Niklas

[Simon Knight]

Hi Niklas,
Thanks for the feedback :)

The BGP policy is functional, but isn't documented very much as the
work is currently under review for a conference. What sort of BGP
policy would you like to use?

DNS is currently supported for Netkit only, which emulation platform
were you using?

[Niklas]

Hi Simon,

I am indeed working with the combination netkit (2.8) and autonetkit
(0.6.0dev-20120207).

As for DNS: If I read the code correctly, it searches for the node
property "device_type" with the values "server" and "router". However
when I interpreted the graph with autonetkit there were no special
config files created.

As for BGP policies: At the moment I am not far enough with the
network to predict what kind of policies I will be needing. Yet I was
amazed by the functionality so I just wanted to make sure it works for
later use. ;)

Just out of curiosity do you have a paper or documentation of
autonetkit under review for that conference as well?

On Feb 22, 8:41 am, Simon Knight <simon.kni...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Niklas,
> Thanks for the feedback :)
>
> The BGP policy is functional, but isn't documented very much as the
> work is currently under review for a conference. What sort of BGP
> policy would you like to use?
>
> DNS is currently supported for Netkit only, which emulation platform
> were you using?
>

[Simon Knight]

Hello,
Yep those are the latest versions.
DNS currently configures with a hierarchy, I need to reduce this back
to the simple case of a single server. It generates the BIND configs
fine, but spins up a few more VMs than is really needed for simple
networks.
The BGP Policy stuff all works, just not documented yet due to
conference anonymity. It will be there when you are ready to use it :)

I'm about to overhaul the core of ANK to make it much easier to extend
in the future. With this will come much improved documentation (I
promise!)

AutoNetkit was introduced in an earlier paper, but we do have some
current papers in submission regarding these new features.

Cheers
Simon

[Niklas]

Hi Simon,

this sounds in particular interesting! In the project I am working on
we just realized that we would need an plugin interface to autonetkit.
So as to add custom properties as for example link speed. (It would be
represented as an edge property on the graph and as a queuing
discipline on the machine.) Is this something you are working on
already?

As for DNS, I tried to add the property value pairs
device_type='router', device_type='server' but could not see an effect
in the final lab. Am I missing something there?

Best
Niklas

On Feb 23, 3:46 pm, Simon Knight <simon.kni...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> Yep those are the latest versions.
> DNS currently configures with a hierarchy, I need to reduce this back
> to the simple case of a single server. It generates the BIND configs
> fine, but spins up a few more VMs than is really needed for simple
> networks.
> The BGP Policy stuff all works, just not documented yet due to
> conference anonymity. It will be there when you are ready to use it :)
>
> I'm about to overhaul the core of ANK to make it much easier to extend
> in the future. With this will come much improved documentation (I
> promise!)
>
> AutoNetkit was introduced in an earlier paper, but we do have some
> current papers in submission regarding these new features.
>
> Cheers
> Simon
>

[Simon Knight]

On 28 February 2012 02:28, Niklas <meta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Simon,
>
> this sounds in particular interesting! In the project I am working on
> we just realized that we would need an plugin interface to autonetkit.
> So as to add custom properties as for example link speed. (It would be
> represented as an edge property on the graph and as a queuing
> discipline on the machine.) Is this something you are working on
> already?

You can set link weights at the moment and they will be pushed out to
the IGP template. More general attributes and plugins is something we
are working towards, but it is a work in progress.

> As for DNS, I tried to add the property value pairs
> device_type='router', device_type='server' but could not see an effect
> in the final lab. Am I missing something there?

You will also need to set the appropriate config file values. You will
need to create a file "autonetkit.cfg" and have the following entries:
[DNS]
hierarchical = 1
[[Server Count]]
l2 cluster = 1
l3 cluster = 1
root = 1

DNS is unsupported at the moment, it will undergo a re-write with the
next version.
Thanks
Simon