Tutorial 1: Get Started#

Welcome to OpenOptics Tutorial! This first tutorial will help you get familiar with the basic workflow and dashboard. You’ll run a Python script to deploy a simple optical data center network (DCN) in an emulation environment (Mininet).

Follow the Quick Start to install OpenOptics if you haven’t.

Step 1: Get the bundled tutorials#

After pip install "openoptics-dcn[mininet]", copy the bundled tutorials into your current working directory and cd in:

openoptics-gen-tutorials          # writes ./tutorials/
cd tutorials

If you’re on a remote machine and want to view the dashboard in a browser on your laptop, set up SSH port forwarding once:

ssh -L localhost:8001:localhost:8001 USER_NAME@YOUR_HOST_NAME

You are all set! Let’s get started!

1. Execute the OpenOptics Python Script.#

python3 1-get-started.py

The script (tutorials/1-get-started.py) contains:

from openoptics import Toolbox, OpticalTopo, OpticalRouting
    
if __name__ == "__main__":

    nb_node = 8

    net = Toolbox.BaseNetwork(
        name="task1",
        backend="Mininet",
        nb_node = nb_node,
        nb_host_per_tor = 1,
        time_slice_duration_ms = 512, # in ms
        use_webserver=True)
    
    circuits = OpticalTopo.round_robin(nb_node=nb_node)
    assert net.deploy_topo(circuits)

    paths = OpticalRouting.routing_direct(net.get_topo())
    assert net.deploy_routing(paths)

    net.start()

This script creates an optical DCN with:

An 8-node optical network.
A round-robin optical topology.
A direct routing between nodes.
A web server for monitoring at http://localhost:8001.

Architecture

Under the hood, BaseNetwork creates a Mininet network with OCS, switches, and hosts (h0-h7).

Each ToR switch is connected to a port of optical circuit switch (OCS), and each ToR switch is connected to a host, as we set nb_host_per_tor = 1.

2. View the dashboard.#

After running the script, open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:8001. You should see the network topology and real-time network metrics.

Dashboard Example

3. Test Network Connectivity#

Use ping to test connectivity and delay between hosts:

For example:

# The first host is named with h0
OpenOptics> h0 ping h1  # Equivalent to executing "ping h1" at h0

You should also see queue depth changes on the dashboard during the ping test.

4. Experiment with Time Slice Duration#

Stop the script (Ctrl+D), then modify the time_slice_duration_ms parameter.

For example, change it from 512 -> 1024

...
time_slice_duration_ms = 1024
...

Then rerun the script and observe the change in ping delay at CLI and queue depth on the dashboard. With a longer slice duration, you should see both delay and queue depth increase.

Tutorial 1: Get Started

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