Frequently Asked Questions

NeST always deletes the network namespaces it creates. How do I disable this?

This feature can be disabled by using NeST config. Add the below lines at the top of your NeST program:

from nest import config

config.set_value("delete_namespaces_on_termination", False)

Since, by default, NeST assigns “randomly” generated names to each namespace, you might also want to add the below line in your code to disable it:

config.set_value("assign_random_names", False)

Note that if the above line is added, then Node names must be at most 3 characters long. This is due to the limitation of naming interfaces in ip link command.

How do I view the iproute2 commands run by NeST?

You can enable this feature by adding the below 2 lines at the top of your program:

from nest import config
config.set_value("log_level", "TRACE")

This will create a file called commands.sh with all the iproute2 commands NeST internally executes.