Mapping, awareness, and virtualization network administrator training tool virtualization module

Abstract

Conducting network administration training in an operational tactical network environment introduces a level of risk to the network that is unacceptable to operational commanders. This forces a choice between the readiness of network administrators and the availability of the tactical network as an operational platform. To address this conflict, the Mapping, Awareness, and Virtualization Network Administrator Training Tool (MAVNATT) architecture has been designed to map and enumerate an operational network in order to create a fully partitioned, faithful virtual copy of that network that can be used safely for network administrator training. A capability does not exist to automatically generate a virtual copy of a network based on a graphical model of that network. This work solved this problem by implementing a prototype of the MAVNATT Virtualization Module, which creates a virtual copy of a mapped operational network. We tested the output of the Virtualization Module against the functional requirements of the MAVNATT system. The prototype implementation successfully integrates a virtualization hypervisor, a network simulator, and a WAN emulator to create a virtual network based on a graph model of an operational network, and demonstrates the ultimate attainability of the MAVNATT architecture’s objectives.