VirtualNet: Mapping Distributed Communication on a Single Node

During the development of a distributed application, programmers usually involve many programs. These programs have different IP addresses and different ports. Sometimes, they even have a same port. For instance, in P2P environment, peers usually use the same port to communicate with each other. We often need tens of computers to develop such a distributed application. Unfortunately, not each one owns as many computers as the developing plan needs. Even if he has enough computers, it is difficult for him to manage these computers efficiently. We propose VirtualNet, a middleware, to solve this problem. When using this virtual network, users can start different programs or processes on it as if in a real distributed environment. Every application that runs on such middleware regards it running on an exclusive computer. Since all the applications are started by the middleware and run on the same computer, it is easy to control them and collect logs for debugging. Moreover, after being tested in such a virtual network and running through the TCP/IP stack, the applications can be immediately deployed in a real environment without any modifications.