Mininet creates a realistic virtual network, running real kernel, switch and application code, on a single machine (VM, cloud or native), in seconds, with a single command.  - mininet.org

My main goal by installing Mininet on my Mac is to use it as a machine to play around with OpenFlow based SDN (Software-Defined Networking). The easiest way is to use the prepackaged Virtual Machine (VM) provided by Mininet.

Here are the steps:

1. Install virtualization system on your Mac. I have tried the free Virtualbox but doesn’t work with latest Mininet VM, just use VMWare Fusion 6 instead (they provide 30 days trial version). Planning to buy the license later ;)

2. Download the Mininet VM here: https://bitbucket.org/mininet/mininet-vm-images/downloads

3. Unzip the VM, run the VM by opening the .ovf file. Here’s snapshot of running Mininet VM

4. We will need to run pre-installed Wireshark program inside the Mininet VM, therefore we will need X11 environment to display the GUI. I have problem forwarding X11 from the VM to my Mac.

My solution is to install the X11 inside the VM itself. Do this by using this command: apt-get install xinit, then apt-get install xinit —fix-missing. Once done, start the X server by using startx command, then try to open Wireshark using the sudo wireshark & command.

If those steps are done, we are good to go. I will write more about Mininet and OpenFlow based SDN (Software-Defined Networking) in the future.

Stay tuned!

PS: I am using Macbook Air 11”, Mid 2011 (1.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 4GB RAM)

Written by Sigit Priyanggoro, Sr Global Partner Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services in Dallas. LinkedIn.