How to use Docker (or Linux Containers) for Network Emulation?

Question

Edit: As of March 2019, although I have not tested it, I believe Docker now has the ability to do real network emulation.

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Edit: As of May 2015, SocketPlane (see website and repo) has joined the Docker team and they're in the process of integrating their OVS solution into Docker core. It appears as if theirs will be the winner of the various Docker networking solutions.

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So I've been using Mininet to run tests on my networking software. It seems to have hit its limits though as Mininet containers are essentially linux containers with only a networking stack. I'd like each container to have its own networking stack, file system AND set of processes - basically I'd like a container as close to a VM as possible. Which brings me to Docker, as I understand, Docker is opposite of Mininet, its containers have a file system and their own processes but not their own networking stack. I'm leaning towards Docker as it has a nice API for forking containers, using the disk space of only the diff. My question is, is it possible to create a set of linux containers (with Docker or similar) with the following container layout + network interface setup?

Answer 1

You can use Pipework for that purpose. It is specifically one of the scenarios it implements (private networks between containers, in addition to the standard Docker network).

Answer 2

I am aware of two open-source network emulators that use linux containers:

The CORE Network Emulator uses containers and each container has its own filesystem (or partial filesystem, because it only creates mount namespaces for the directories required by the services running on each node).

The VNX network emulator is another option. It uses either KVM or LXC to create virtual nodes (but I have not tried the LXC option, yet).