Project Name: netops-clab

Wikitech Usernames of requestors: Cathal Mooney

Purpose: Simulate the Wikimedia Foundation WAN and datacenter networks to test and prototype new network designs/policy

Brief description:

The plan would be to use containerlab (BSD 3-Clause) to create a replica of the WMF WAN and datacenter nodes and interconnections on a Linux host. Each container would simulate a network node, with bridges and routing daemons configured to mirror traffic forwarding on the production network.

The topology file for containerlab will be built from the WMF Netbox data, to reflect the production setup precisely.

Most software is just Linux itself, and the routing provided by the kernel, network namespaces the containers are placed in, bridges and the veth pairs that connect them. In addition projects like BIRD (GPLv2) and FRRouting (GPLv2) will be used.

In terms of disk there are no special requirements. The demand on RAM for this project is quite high however, with approx 100 containers running for the full lab, each running a separate instance of one of the routing daemons. Requirement is for minimum 16GB of RAM and preferably 20GB, which I understand may mean it's not possible.

How soon you are hoping this can be fulfilled: Whenever it can be, but it is not urgent I am currently running this on a desktop machine at home. Desire to move to VPS is to give it a more permanent home and make it easier to access for colleagues who wish to use the lab.