Is there a "beta" Bitcoin network?

[Costia]

It seems that there is going to be a significant change to bitcoin in february, so i was wondering what testing is being done.
For example in WoW and swtor - before any patch is introduced to the live servers it is applied on a few PTR/beta servers that are avaliable for everyone. This way a patch is actually tested by players on a large scale before it goes into the "real" game servers. (and there are still bugs on the live servers)
So, is there a public beta chainblock created for the purpose of testing upcoming changes?
A chainblock for people to play with "beta" bitcoins without risking anything and giving feedback to the developers on any proposed change.
A chainblock that can be safely deleted/purged without any notice.
This will also allow the developer to safely create invalid chainblocks\transactions offline to test the network's response to such an event

[vuce]

Yes, it's called testnet.

[stcupp]

yes there is read this:   https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Testnet

[Costia]

Is it safe to run a the client with the testnet option on the same pc as the real network?
blockchain will be overwritten? wallet?

[vuce]

You will have to backup the wallet. Otherwise I don't think why it wouldn't be.

[2112]

Is it safe to run a the client with the testnet option on the same pc as the real network?
blockchain will be overwritten? wallet?

Yes, it is 100% safe. You can even run them simultaneously. Just make sure that you use -rpcport flag together with the -testnet flag. Otherwise the two instances of bitcoin will try to fight over the same RPC port.

[ThePiachu]

If one was to implement some revolutionary change in the algorithm, one would need to use a modified testnet in a box:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/testnet-in-a-box/
As otherwise the normal Bitcoin clients working on testnet might not work with the beta code.