Simulators are an excellent tool for quick systems prototyping and large-scale parameter sweeps, but they cannot match the accuracy of live network evaluations. Switching from the simulation to the actual implementation often requires a considerable development effort. Network I/O implementation, measurement instrumentation, deployment automation and distributed debugging are among the most time consuming tasks that the developers face. Moreover, large parts of the application code existing in the simulator are not reused in the actual system. Bridging the gap between the simulation and the actual system deployment was the primary motivation for developing ProtoPeer, the framework presented in this talk