Kathará vs Mininet

Kathará is a free, open-source system for emulating networks in interactive lessons, demos, production-network sandbox tests, and protocol development. It represents network devices with containers connected through virtual Layer-2 LANs, and scenarios can use Docker or Kubernetes as their virtualization backend. Built-in images include Quagga, FRRouting, Bind, P4, and OpenVSwitch; users can also supply their own container images. A Python package exposes APIs for custom code. Kathará supports Linux, macOS on Intel or Apple Silicon, and Windows 10 and 11. Debian and Ubuntu installations are available through apt, with precompiled packages for other listed distributions. Settings cover IPv6, terminal behavior, volume mounts, and remote Docker or Kubernetes connections. The software depends on Docker by default, and rootless Docker and Podman are unsupported. The project lists version 3.8.3 as covered by security patches. It is free, with a listed price of free.

Mininet is a free network emulator that creates virtual hosts, switches, controllers and links on one machine. Its hosts run standard Linux network software on the real Linux kernel and network stack, while switches support OpenFlow. The project describes uses including research, development, learning, prototyping, testing and debugging, including experiments with SDN systems using OpenFlow and P4. A topology-aware and OpenFlow-aware command-line interface supports debugging and network-wide tests. Users can select parameterized topologies or create custom ones, and an extensible Python API supports network creation and experimentation. Mininet networks can connect to real networks, and code developed in Mininet can move to real systems with minimal changes. Installation options include a pre-packaged virtual machine, native installation from source and packages for recent Ubuntu or Debian 11 and later; Fedora support is experimental. Mininet depends on the Linux kernel, while its VM can run through VMware or VirtualBox on Mac, Windows and Linux. Its networks are constrained by a single server's CPU and bandwidth, and it cannot currently run non-Linux-compatible OpenFlow switches or applications. Mininet is released under a permissive BSD open source license.