Remote Network Labs: An On-Demand Network Cloud for Configuration Testing
Network equipment is difficult to configure correctly. To minimize configuration errors, network administrators typically build a smaller scale test lab replicating the production network and test out their configuration changes before rolling out the changes to production. Unfortunately, building a test lab is expensive and the test equipment is rarely utilized. In this paper, we present Remote Network Labs, which is aimed at leveraging the expensive network equipment more efficiently and reducing the cost of building a test lab. Similar to a server cloud such as Amazon EC2, a user could request network equipment remotely and connect them through a GUI or web services interface. The network equipment is geographically distributed, allowing us to reuse test equipment anywhere. Beyond saving costs, Remote Network Labs brings about many additional benefits, including the ability to fully automate network configuration testing.
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