You ask for feedback:
I am surprised the author did not mention or uses Software Defined Networking (SDN), Openflow or P4 (programming language for programmable switches) or the mininet simulator. He must have skipped reading the scientific literature even though he is a computer science sophomore?
I programmed and build one of the very first ISP hardware and software systems in 1987-1997 when we connected the first submarine link between the US and Europe in Amsterdam.
Google switched 50% of the internet that they owned in 2012 to SDN and Openflow [1]. I'm sure they progressed to P4 and more recent SDN controllers since then. They build the Google Fiber ISP[5] with SDN. Cloudflare also uses SDN when last I checked. A majority of the internet has moved to SDN (there are many versions.
The author built his simulation on legacy systems mostly from the Telecom world, an alternate reality distinct from the real internet and acces providers we call ISPs. Telecom systems are about surveillance and monetizing the free internet.
You can query the US ISPs on the Nanog mailing list, there are similar social media for the European, Asian and other ISPs on other continents. Beware that those are biased to Telecom as well as Tier 1 network operators and less to ISP access providers.
I do not think we should continue with the current implementation of the internet. I think we should start deploying the true internet (decentralized, peer to peer) standard and expand it to the Enernet standards of the near future: every building a router (switch) and fiber optic and electricity cables to their peers; their closest neighbors. If every building has peer connections than you are connected all the way to the internet exchanges without need for Tech Bros, Government, Telecom, ISP or Tier 1 network oligopolies. True internet [3], true Enernet [4].
[1] OpenFlow @ Google - Urs Hoelzle, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLHJUfgxEO4
[2] The Future of Networking, and the Past of Protocols - Scott Shenker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHeyuD89n1Y
[3] Fiberhood White Paper https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Merik-Voswinkel/publica...
[4] Enernet - Bob Metcalfe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axfsqdpHVFU
[5] Google Fiber build "Fiberhoods" but my own Enernet ISP Fiberhood had trademarked that name before in 2011.
well.. openflow is pretty much dead, too inflexible, too slow. The whole control/user plane split is an attempt of the classical router vendors to keep their proprietary boxes. It adds complexity as it requires to synchronize the state of some controller with some data plane box.
P4 was a great idea, but there's not much hardware that supports it.
fd.io / vpp is an impressive stack for software-only routing. Like all SW-only solutions, it suffers from high power consumption and packet rate variability. At today's packet rates, you always have to ask 'how many CPU instructions / cycles are required to perform this or that function per packet'.
Thank you for the context. I did start out with mininet, then moved to containernet->containerlab. Mininet could not model subscriber session lifecycle in how I wanted it. P4/Openflow is on the radar, thanks for the pointer.