Achieving Reproducible Network Environments with INSALATA.

Analyzing network environments for security flaws and assessing new service and infrastructure configurations in general are dangerous and error-prone when done in operational networks. Therefore, cloning such networks into a dedicated test environment is beneficial for comprehensive testing and analysis without impacting the operational network. To automate this reproduction of a network environment in a physical or virtualized testbed, several key features are required: (a) a suitable network model to describe network environments, (b) an automated acquisition process to instantiate this model for the respective network environment, and (c) an automated setup process to deploy the instance to the testbed.