Configuring complex network with VLANs and virtual ifaces
 

Hello,
At first, I would like to say hello to community, because I'm newbie on this forums.

And now about my problem. :)

I'm trying to configure network which works on particular way for my thesis:

1. Network consists of 3 to 4 machines (VMs created in VirtualBox as a testbed, working with 2 interfaces each, one bridged for incoming internet traffic and one internal for communication between machines). At final stage, machines should not use any of Virtualbox tools (such as DHCP and integrated router) and traffic should be injected in controllable ways

2. Each machine has 3 layers of communication. One- for "best effort" traffic (vlan with bandwidth limited to 2mbit/s), one for flow-based communication (rest of free bandwidth- few kbit/s) and one for communication (something like out-of-band communication in telecom, only few kbit/s)

3. Each machine should act as a router so internal network is able to create paths at the start

4. Each machine can forward traffic depending on packet header (using VLAN ID). If packet header matches vlan ID of subnetwork (flow-based) it is sent to proper interface. If it doesn't - each machine resolves what would be done with packet (drop, add header or forward to best effort interface).

What I have right now are virtual interfaces with vlan for best effort limited with wondershaper and compiled and prepared OpenFlow for flow-based traffic (for now I don't need advice on this part, unless there is some OpenFlow expert on this forums who could guide me through OpenFlow :)).

Because I'm rookie in configuring Linux as router/switch, I would like to have a guidance through applying each prerequisites to testbed. I've already searched through forums for configuring Linux as router, configuring Vlans and limiting bandwidth, but still - I may need many things to glue it together.

I'm using 4xUbuntu 11.04 on the newest VirtualBox. Thanks in advance for any help and sorry for my bad English :)