Ixia-c Traffic Engine and FRR with Containerlab

Overview

In this setup, we demonstrate how to deploy Ixia-c Traffic Engine nodes in Containerlab. This setup has an FRR container as a Device Under Test (DUT). Finally, we use otgen CLI tool to run the test and report statistics.

Diagram

Layer 3 topology and generated traffic flows

Quick start

Follow this sections for a quick version of how to run the lab using make. This is how CI pipeline in GitHub Actions runs it.

1. Clone this repository

   git clone --recursive https://github.com/open-traffic-generator/otg-examples.git
   cd otg-examples/clab/ixia-c-te-frr
   

2. To run all the steps below at once, execute:

   make all
   make clean
   

Otherwise, follow step-by-step instructions below.

Prerequisites

• Linux host or VM with sudo permissions and Docker support
• git - how to install depends on your Linux distro.
• Docker
• Containerlab

• otgen

  bash -c "$(curl -sL https://get.otgcdn.net/otgen)" -- -v 0.6.2
  

• Make sure /usr/local/bin is in your $PATH variable (by default this is not the case on CentOS 7)

  cmd=otgen
  dir=/usr/local/bin
  if ! command -v ${cmd} &> /dev/null && [ -x ${dir}/${cmd} ]; then
    echo "${cmd} exists in ${dir} but not in the PATH, updating PATH to:"
    PATH="/usr/local/bin:${PATH}"
    echo $PATH
  fi
  

Clone the repository

1. Clone this repository to the Linux host where you want to run the lab. Do this only once.

   git clone https://github.com/open-traffic-generator/otg-examples.git
   

2. Navigate to the lab folder

   cd otg-examples/clab/ixia-c-te-frr
   

Deploy a lab

sudo containerlab deploy

Run traffic

1. Read MAC addresses assigned to the nodes

   TE1SMAC=`cat clab-ixctedut/topology-data.json | jq -r '.links[0]["a"].mac'`
   TE1DMAC=`cat clab-ixctedut/topology-data.json | jq -r '.links[0]["z"].mac'`
   TE2SMAC=`cat clab-ixctedut/topology-data.json | jq -r '.links[1]["a"].mac'`
   TE2DMAC=`cat clab-ixctedut/topology-data.json | jq -r '.links[1]["z"].mac'`
   

2. Run traffic defined in otg.yml with otgen tool, taking care to replace stub MAC addresses with current values

   export OTG_API="https://localhost:8443"
   cat otg.yml | \
   sed "s/00:00:00:00:11:aa/$TE1SMAC/g" | sed "s/00:00:00:00:11:bb/$TE1DMAC/g" | \
   sed "s/00:00:00:00:22:aa/$TE2SMAC/g" | sed "s/00:00:00:00:22:bb/$TE2DMAC/g" | \
   otgen run -k | \
   otgen transform -m port | \
   otgen display -m table
   

Destroy the lab

sudo containerlab destroy