Part 1: Everyday Mininet-WiFi Usage

Interact with Stations and APs

Start a minimal topology and enter the CLI:

$ sudo mn --wifi

The default topology is the minimal topology, which includes one OpenFlow kernel AP connected to two stations, plus the OpenFlow reference controller. This topology could also be specified on the command line with –topo=minimal. Other topologies are also available out of the box; see the –topo section in the output of mn -h.

All four entities (2 stations processes, 1 ap process, 1 basic controller) are now running.

If no specific test is passed as a parameter, the Mininet-WiFi CLI comes up.

Display Mininet CLI commands:

mininet-wifi> help

Display Nodes:

mininet-wifi> nodes

If the first string typed into the Mininet-WiFi CLI is a station, ap or controller name, the command is executed on that node. Run a command on a station process:

mininet-wifi> sta1 ifconfig -a

You should see the station’s sta-wlan0 and loopback (lo) interfaces. Note that this interface (sta1-wlan0) is not seen by the primary Linux system when ifconfig is run, because it is specific to the network namespace of the host process.

In contrast, the ap by default runs in the root network namespace, so running a command on the ap is the same as running it from a regular terminal:

mininet-wifi> ap1 ifconfig -a

Getting information from node.params

py sta1.params

Getting information of the wireless network interfaces

py sta1.wintfs

Optionally, you can get some other information of the interface

py sta1.wintfs[0].txpower

The same can be done for rssi, mode, channel, freq, range, ip, ip6, etc.

Supported Wireless Modes

Mininet-WiFi supports IEEE 802.11a,b,g,b,p,ax,ac, etc. You can basically use all the modes supported by hostapd and wpa_supplicant. For example:

$ sudo mn --wifi --mode=g --channel=6
$ sudo mn --wifi --mode=a --channel=36
$ sudo mn --wifi --mode=n2 --channel=1 # for 2.4GHz
$ sudo mn --wifi --mode=n --channel=36 # for 5GHz
$ sudo  mn --wifi --mode=ax2 --channel=1 --mode=ax --encrypt=wpa2 --passwd=test101010 # for 2.4GHz
$ sudo  mn --wifi --mode=ax5 --channel=36 --mode=ax --encrypt=wpa2 --passwd=test101010 # for 5GHz
$ sudo  mn --wifi --mode=ax --channel=21 --mode=ax --encrypt=wpa2 --passwd=test101010 # for 6GHz

Test connectivity between stations

Now, verify that you can ping from station1 to station2:

mininet-wifi> sta1 ping -c1 sta2

You should see a much lower ping time for the second try (< 100us). A flow entry covering ICMP ping traffic was previously installed in the switch, so no control traffic was generated, and the packets immediately pass through the switch.

An easier way to run this test is to use the Mininet-WiFi CLI built-in pingall command, which does an all-pairs ping:

mininet-wifi> pingall

Exit the CLI:

mininet> exit

If Mininet crashes for some reason, clean it up:

$ sudo mn -c

Creating wired link between sta and ap

You can create a wired link between station and access point with cls=TCLink, as shown below:

from mininet.link import TCLink
..
..

net.addLink(sta1, ap1, cls=TCLink)