# MeDICINE: Rapid Prototyping of Production-Ready Network Services in Multi-PoP Environments

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.05995 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05995/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 20 Jun 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Learning to Sail Dynamic Networks: The MARLIN Reinforcement Learning Framework for Congestion Control in Tactical Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15591/) (2023)
- [Towards a Playground to Democratize Experimentation and Benchmarking of AI Agents for Network Troubleshooting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01997/) (2025)
- [Revelio: ML-Generated Debugging Queries for Distributed Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14347/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Virtualized network services consisting of multiple individual network functions are already today deployed across multiple sites, so called multi-PoP (points of presence) environ- ments. This allows to improve service performance by optimizing its placement in the network. But prototyping and testing of these complex distributed software systems becomes extremely challenging. The reason is that not only the network service as such has to be tested but also its integration with management and orchestration systems. Existing solutions, like simulators, basic network emulators, or local cloud testbeds, do not support all aspects of these tasks. To this end, we introduce MeDICINE, a novel NFV prototyping platform that is able to execute production-ready network func- tions, provided as software containers, in an emulated multi-PoP environment. These network functions can be controlled by any third-party management and orchestration system that connects to our platform through standard interfaces. Based on this, a developer can use our platform to prototype and test complex network services in a realistic environment running on his laptop.