Mininet vs QuNetSim

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.

QuNetSim is a free, MIT-licensed Python framework for developing and testing quantum networking applications and protocols. It includes built-in exercises for qubit teleportation, entanglement distribution, superdense coding, and quantum key distribution. Multi-hop networks use entanglement swapping to create links between distant hosts. You can define routing functions from classical and quantum network states, represented with NetworkX graphs. The event-driven model gives packets sequence numbers and lets them wait for acknowledgements. Host, Protocols, and Network components correspond to application, transport, and network layers. Supported backends include SimulaQron, ProjectQ, and EQSN, with SimulaQron listed as the default; custom network and qubit backends can also be imported. Installation uses pip and includes an example-generating template. Linux, macOS, and Windows setup instructions require Python 3.5 or newer. It is intended for students and instructors, especially newcomers, and is described as educational rather than a full quantum-physics simulator.