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%    NEPI, a framework to manage network experiments
%    Copyright (C) 2013 INRIA
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%    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
%    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as
%    published by the Free Software Foundation;
%
%    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
%    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
%    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
%    GNU General Public License for more details.
%
%    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
%    along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
%
% Author: Alina Quereilhac <alina.quereilhac@inria.fr>
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\section{What is NEPI?}

NEPI is not a network simulator, nor an emulator or a testbed. 
NEPI is a Python library that provides classes to describe and 
run network experiments on different experimentation platforms
(e.g. Planetlab, OMF wireless testbeds, network simulators, etc).

Imagine that you want to run an experiment to test on the Internet 
a distributed application you just implemented.
You can use NEPI to automate deployment of your application on 
the PlanetLab testbed, run the experiment, and then collect result files
to your local machine.
NEPI aims at providing a re-usable code base to run network 
experiments on target experimentation platforms, and in this
way decrease the time you spend developing platform-specific 
scripts and debugging them. 

NEPI is a network experiment management framework that provides a 
simple way of describing network experiments, and the logic to 
automatically deploy those experiments on the target experimentation 
environments.
It also provides the means to control the resources used in the experiment
(e.g. Nodes, applications, switches, virtual machines, routing table entries, 
etc) during experiment execution, and to collect results generated by
the experiment to a local repository.

The experiment deployment and control are done by the
ExperimentController (EC), which is the entity responsible for the 
global orchestration of the experiment. 
The EC knows nothing about how to manage specific resources 
(e.g. how to configure a network interface in a PlanetLab node),
instead it delegates resource management to platform-specific
entities called Resource Manager (RM).
The RMs are responsible for controlling resources 
(e.g. Linux hosts, Open vSwitches on PlanetLab 
nodes, etc). Different types of resources are be controlled by
specific RMs.
All RMs implement a same API that the EC uses to communicate 
with them in a uniform way.

NEPI can not control all existing resources
on all existing experimentation platforms by default.
However, arbitrary resources can be controlled in NEPI if the 
corresponding Resource Manager is implemented for it.
Fortunately, NEPI already provides several ResourceManagers to
manage different resources on a variety of testbeds, and new 
Resource Manager classes can be extended from existing ones by
the experimenters.
The idea behind NEPI is to support running network experiments on 
potentially any experimentation platform, using a single
software tool, instead of using a dedicated software for 
each platform. 

\section{What does a NEPI script look like?}
\label{faq:ping_example}

Here is a very simple experiment example, which runs a PING
to "nepi.inria.fr" from a given host.
Note that you will need to replace the hostname, username, and
ssh\_key variables va to run the example. 

\begin{lstlisting}[language=Python]
from nepi.execution.ec import ExperimentController

ec = ExperimentController(exp_id="myexperiment")

hostname = # Host that can be accessed with an SSH account
username = # SSH user account on host
ssh_key = # Path to SSH public key file to access host

node = ec.register_resource("linux::Node")
ec.set(node, "hostname", hostname)
ec.set(node, "username", username)
ec.set(node, "identity", ssh_key)

app = ec.register_resource("linux::Application")
ec.set(app, "command", "ping -c3 nepi.inria.fr")
ec.register_connection(app, node)

ec.deploy()

ec.wait_finished(app)

print ec.trace(app, "stdout")

ec.shutdown()

\end{lstlisting}

\section{What does NEPI stands for?}

It stands for Network Experiment Programming Interface.

\section{Who developed NEPI?}

NEPI was developed at INRIA, Sophia Antipolis France.
A first prototype was implemented in 2010. 
Versions 1.0 and 2.0 were released in 2011 and 2012, respectively. 
The current NEPI version is 3.0. 

The following people have contributed to the project:

\begin{itemize}
  \item NEPI version 3.0: Alina Quereilhac, Julien Tribino, Lucia Guevgeozian Odizzio, Alexandros Kouvakas
  \item NEPI versions 1.0 and 2.0: Alina Quereilhac, Claudio Freire, Martin Ferrari, Mathieu Lacage
  \item NEPI prototype: Martin Ferrari, Mathieu Lacage
  \item Other contributors: Dirk Hasselbalch
\end{itemize}

\section{Is it free?}

Yes, NEPI is free software. It is free to use, free to modify, free to share.
NEPI v2.0 is licensed under GPL v2, so you can do whatever you want with it, 
as long as you keep the same license. 

\section{How can I contribute?}

There are many ways you can contribute to the project. 
The first one is using it and reporting bugs. 
You can report bugs on the NEPI bugzilla page at: 

\url{http://nepi.inria.fr/bugzilla} \\

You can also become a part of the NEPI community and join our mailing lists:

\begin{itemize}
    \item To subscribe to the users mailing list at \textit{nepi-users@inria.fr}
        you can send an email to \textit{sympa@inria.fr} with subject
        \textit{Subscribe nepi-users <put-your-user-name-here>}
    \item To subscribe to the developers mailing list at \textit{nepi-developers@inria.fr}
        you can send an email to \textit{sympa@inria.fr} with subject
        \textit{Subscribe nepi-developers <put-your-user-name-here>}
    \end{itemize}

To contribute with bug fixes and new features, please send your code patch
to the \textit{nepi-developers} list.

\section{How can I report a bug ?}

To report a bug take a look at the NEPI bugzilla page at :

\url{http://nepi.inria.fr/bugzilla} \\

\section{Where can I get more information?}

For more information visit NEPI web site at:

\url{http://nepi.inria.fr} \\


