Design and implementation of a simulation environment for network virtualization

Network virtualization has been proposed as a key enabler of the future internet, as it allows multiple networks to coexist on a shared physical infrastructure, and as such overcomes the difficulties in deploying novel technologies in the current Internet. However, much confusion still exists on the impact virtualization will have on performance, since we lack the necessary tools to study the behaviour of a virtualized network infrastructure. We report on the architecture and implementation of a simulation environment for virtualizing both (optical) network and IT infrastructures. We provide a detailed overview of the layered architecture, give insight in the design and implementation of the simulator, discuss potential use cases and finally include some preliminary results.