In order to develop and debug network protocols it is either necessary to have a large laboratory filled with computers and networking equipment or to have a way to simulate several machines talking on a network. Until recently simulated systems have only partially implemented some part of a protocol so that the protocol code could be tested within a single machine. With the advent of cheap and ubiquitious virtualization technology, as well as cheap, fast computers with large secondary storage it is possible to simulate teams of machines on networks of varying shape and sizes. Unlike the partial simulations of the past virtualized machines have the advantage of being full systems in their own right, able to run just as a "real" machine would and to reproduce the same problems that users in the field would see.

This talk covers setting up and working with multiple systems in a virtual environment, using VMware Workstation as the virtualization technology and FreeBSD as the system being developed and debugged. Network conditions permitting this may include a full demonstration, but the machine in question (chuo.neville-neil.com) is in Tokyo so I don't want to promise this.

speaker: George V. Neville-Neil

location: SITE B0138