METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SIMULATING A NETWORK TOPOLOGY USING A PHYSICAL MACHINE

Abstract

A method and a system are disclosed for simulating a network topology using a physical machine. A physical switch with multiple ports is divided into multiple slice switches according to a network topology. Each slice switch simulates a node in a network. Every virtual port of the slice switch corresponds to a physical port. In simulation operation, a port-mapping table is applied to allow the virtual port to be one-to-one mapped to one physical port; a VLAN conversion table is used to manage the VLAN IDs for the virtual ports and to configure a VLAN tag applied to a simulated packet so that the packet can operate in the slice switch; an output port table is used to determine the output port of the simulated packet; and a pop-off VLAN tag table is used to allow the packet to restore to its original VLAN ID or non-VLAN tag state.