- Getting started! -


Creating an Account


  1. Go to https://portal.geni.net/ and click on the orange button that says "Use GENI"
  2. On this page click the link located on the bottom of the page that says "Request a login here"
  3. Fill out the form that will be shown in that page with all the proper information and submit it
  4. Keep an eye on your email as the team at GENI will be emailing you when your account is ready for use

Logging into GENI


  1. Go to https://portal.geni.net and click on the orange button that says "Use GENI"
  2. On this page select "National Center for Supercomputing Applications" for the orginization's name

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  3. Now write down your account details and log in

Joining a Project


  1. Once logged in, hover on the "Home" button at the top of the page and click on "Projects". Next, click the blue button that says "Join a Project".
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  2. On this page write down your Instructor's name. When you find your class's project, click on the "Join" button.
  3. You must now wait until your instructor approves the request to join the project

Getting SSH Keys


  1. On the GENI website on your first internet tab, the top corner of this page should have your name. Hover over your name and then select "SSH Keys".

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  2. Click the blue button that says, "generate and download an SSH keypair"
  3. Follow the directions on the page and enter in a passphrase It is very important to remember this passphrase!
  4. Next, click the blue button that reads "Generate SSH private key"
  5. Click the button near the top of the window that reads "Download private key".
  6. Lastly, you are going to store the private key in the directory~/.ssh/. In addition you are going to change the permissions of the key. This is done by executing the following commands in a terminal:


  7. mkdir ~/.ssh
    mv ~/Downloads/id_geni_ssh_rsa ~/.ssh/
    chmod 0600 ~/.ssh/id_geni_ssh_rsa
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Hello GENI Experiment - Reserving Resources


  1. At the portal home page click the New slice button

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  2. Name the slice something like [yourLastName]HelloWorld.
  3. Next click the Add Resources button near the top of the page.
  4. In the Choose Rspec section, select the existing Hello GENI option. The follwing topology should appear on the screen.

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  5. Click on the Site node and choose any aggregate with InstaGeni or ExoGENI.

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  6. Finally, click the Reserve Resource button at the bottom of the page.

Hello GENI Experiment - SSH to the Server Node


  1. After you send the request to reserve the resources on the previous step, on the top of the pages hover your mouse over "Home" and select "Slices". On this page click on the slice that you created.
  2. If the two boxes look Grey, it means that they are not ready yet. If they are green, it means that they have been reserved successfully and that you may now use them.

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  3. Now on GENI, on the page of your topology click on the "Details" button.



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  4. Now for any one of your nodes you will copy the username@host_address -p some_port



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  5. Execute the command ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_geni_ssh_rsa username@host_address -p some_port
  6. If you are asked if you want to continue, say yes. If prompted for a passphrase, enter the passphrase from when you generated the SSH key pairs. (It is important to note that as you write your passphrase it will not be displayed in the terminal!)



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Hello GENI Experiment - Continued


  1. On your Server terminal, type in the following command: ifconfig
  2. Now, you should be able to see information corresponding to your Server node. Specifically, you should see information about "eth0", "eth1", and "lo".

  3. To the right of "eth0", you can notice that it says "inet addr" - the numbers right next to that make up the IP address of your node. Try copying and pasting this into your browser of preference, and click on "Web Server Statistics" to see the statistics corresponding to the web server on your node.

  4. Refreshing the page multiple times will yield different statistical information on the page. Refresh the page multiple times, and take note of these changes. These changes occur because you are requesting information every time you click the refresh button.
  5. Next, hit the back button on your web browser. This time, click on the second link, which reads "Logs from the iperf Server". This shows statistical information from the iperf server.

Hello GENI Experiment - Generating Traffic Between Nodes


  1. To generate traffic, you will have to open a connection to the Client node. You can do so by following the same instructions you used to connect to the Server node; the only difference is that you will have to click the Client node on GENI, as opposed to the Server node, when trying to find out the host name and port.
  2. After you connect successfully, your terminal for the Client should look similar to this:

  3. To start generating traffic between the Client and Server, execute the following command on the terminal of the Client: iperf -c server -P 2
  4. Try using the same command again, switching out the number 2 for another positive number (Don't make it too big!). You should notice different results on the output.

Hello GENI Experiment - Finishing Up


  1. On your Server terminal, type "exit", and hit enter in order to exit out of the Server node.
  2. Do the same on the Client: type "exit" and hit enter to exit the Client node.
  3. Lastly, looking at the webpage for your slice in the GENI Portal, click the "Delete" button, and click "Yes" on the pop-up. This will make the resources you reserved available again for other users.

Related Readings and Videos


  1. SSH Private Keys: Link.
  2. Network Switch: Link.
  3. WinSCP Installation and Usage Guide: Link.
  4. Wireshark Installation and Usage Guide: Link.