CORE: Common Open Research Emulator

Copyright (c)2005-2025 the Boeing Company.

See the LICENSE file included in this distribution.

The Common Open Research Emulator (CORE) is a tool for emulating networks on one or more machines. You can connect these emulated networks to live networks. CORE consists of a GUI for drawing topologies of lightweight virtual machines, and Python modules for scripting network emulation.

We are leveraging GitHub hosted documentation and Discord for persistent chat rooms. This allows for more dynamic conversations and the capability to respond faster. Feel free to join us at the link below.

• Documentation
• Discord Channel

Requires Python 3.9+. More detailed instructions and install options can be found here.

Grab the latest deb/rpm from releases.

This will install vnoded/vcmd, system dependencies, and CORE within a python virtual environment at /opt/core/venv.

sudo <yum/apt> install -y ./<package>

Then install OSPF MDR from source:

git clone https://github.com/USNavalResearchLaboratory/ospf-mdr.git
cd ospf-mdr
./bootstrap.sh
./configure --disable-doc --enable-user=root --enable-group=root \
  --with-cflags=-ggdb --sysconfdir=/usr/local/etc/quagga --enable-vtysh \
  --localstatedir=/var/run/quagga
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

The following should get you up and running on Ubuntu 22.04. This would install CORE into a python3 virtual environment and install OSPF MDR from source.

git clone https://github.com/coreemu/core.git
cd core
# install dependencies to run installation task
./setup.sh
# run the following or open a new terminal
source ~/.bashrc
# Ubuntu
inv install
# CentOS
inv install -p /usr