Flightplan Demo Platform (FDP)

Introduction

FDP is a portable demo/teaching platform for computer networking. It builds on existing tooling to enable end-to-end experimentation and zero-effort in-browser interactive visualization. It includes an example teaching demo and a demo for P4-based SDN research. More information can be found on the Flightplan website.

Usage Examples

See an early demo video:

This was presented at N2Women'20 where it was selected for the runner-up award!

Check out the demo we presented at SIGCSE'21. Our abstract sets the scene for the demo.

Usage Instructions

1. Instructions to create a FDP-based demo is given in Tutorial.pdf and briefly mentioned below.
2. Instructions to work with source code is given in TutorialUnity.pdf.
3. Raw and intermediate data for the example demos can be used to reproduce their behaviour.

Backend System

1. Download the FDP_release and traffic.sh from github and place them on the web server on which you are are going to host the FDP.
2. Download the topology.yml and config.yml from github containing template for the topology and configuration files respectively.
3. Create the experiment and generate the pcap files for the each node along the path of a packet from source host node to destination host node.
4. Create graph log files and place them in a directory, if required to show run time graph in the animation.
5. Place the images in a directory, if required to show them in the animation.
6. Update the topology.yml file based upon the experiment.
7. Update the config.yml file to customize the animation. If you are using graphs or images for the animation please provide this information too in the config.yml file.

Creating The Experiment

Execute the following command to generate the data readable to FDP:

./traffic -create <Streaming Asset Directory> <Name of Experiment> <Topology File> <pcap directory> <Configuration File> <Graph Directory> <Image Directory>

Where,

Parameter	Description	Value Type
Streaming Asset Directory	Path of the directory FDP_release/StreamingAssets	String
Name of Experiment	Name of Experiment	_ Saparated string
Topology File	Path of topology.yml file	String
pcap directory	Path of the directory where pcap files are	String
Configuration File	Path of the config.yml file	String
Graph Directory	Graph directory path	String/None
Image Directory	Path of the directory	String/None

Removing The Experiment

Execute the following command to remove the existing experiment from the FDP experiment list:

./traffic -remove <Streaming Asset Directory> <Name of Experiment>

Where,

Parameter	Description	Value Type
Streaming Asset Directory	Path of the directory FDP_release/StreamingAssets	String
Name of Experiment	Name of Experiment	_ Saparated string

Frontend System

1. Open the web browser (Chrome / Firefox / Safari / MS Edge).
2. Go to the FDP hosted website.
3. Choose the experiment from the drop down menu.
4. There you have a rich interactive 3D network.

License

Apache 2.0

Author

Heena Nagda