This thesis describes the design of a Virtual Application Networking Infrastructure (VANI) node that can be used to facilitate network architecture experimentation. Cur- rently the VANI nodes provide four classes of physical resources – processing, reconfig- urable hardware, storage and interconnection fabric – but the set of sharable resources can be expanded. Virtualization software allows slices of these resources to be appor- tioned to VANI nodes that can in turn be interconnected to form virtual networks, which can operate according to experimental network and application protocols. This thesis discusses the design decisions that have been made in the development of this system and provides a detailed description of the prototype, including how users interact with the resources and the interfaces provided by the virtualization layers.

This thesis describes the design of a Virtual Application Networking Infrastructure (VANI) node that can be used to facilitate network architecture experimentation. Cur- rently the VANI nodes provide four classes of physical resources – processing, reconfig- urable hardware, storage and interconnection fabric – but the set of sharable resources can be expanded. Virtualization software allows slices of these resources to be appor- tioned to VANI nodes that can in turn be interconnected to form virtual networks, which can operate according to experimental network and application protocols. This thesis discusses the design decisions that have been made in the development of this system and provides a detailed description of the prototype, including how users interact with the resources and the interfaces provided by the virtualization layers.