Testbeds and Research Infrastructures. Development of Networks and Communities. 6th International ICST Conference, TridentCom 2010, Berlin, Germany, May 18-20, 2010, Revised Selected Papers

Research Article

Design of a Configurable Wireless Network Testbed with Live Traffic

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-642-17851-1_15,
        author={Ruben Merz and Harald Schi\o{}berg and Cigdem Sengul},
        title={Design of a Configurable Wireless Network Testbed with Live Traffic},
        proceedings={Testbeds and Research Infrastructures. Development of Networks and Communities. 6th International ICST Conference, TridentCom 2010, Berlin, Germany, May 18-20, 2010, Revised Selected Papers},
        proceedings_a={TRIDENTCOM},
        year={2012},
        month={10},
        keywords={Wireless testbeds live traffic online configurations},
        doi={10.1007/978-3-642-17851-1_15}
    }
    
  • Ruben Merz
    Harald Schiöberg
    Cigdem Sengul
    Year: 2012
    Design of a Configurable Wireless Network Testbed with Live Traffic
    TRIDENTCOM
    Springer
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-17851-1_15
Ruben Merz1,*, Harald Schiöberg1,*, Cigdem Sengul1,*
  • 1: An-Institut der Technischen Universität Berlin
*Contact email: ruben.merz@telekom.de, harald@net.t-labs.tu-berlin.de, cigdem.sengul@telekom.de

Abstract

Testbeds have become standard tools for performance evaluation in wireless networks as they allow for evaluation with realistic wireless propagation and interference conditions, hardware constraints and timing requirements. However, in most testbeds, traffic and user mobility is generated by either using synthetic load generation tools, or replaying traffic traces. Evaluations using live traffic generated by real users, possibly moving around the network, are typically not possible. This is the main motivation of our research: building a wireless research testbed that enables experimentation with live traffic. In this paper, we present the design and architecture of a campus-wide wireless network testbed towards this goal. Our testbed enables both transparent Internet access and seamless mobility to the network users, and supports full network reconfigurations in the presence of live traffic. The reliability of user traffic is guaranteed by failure avoidance mechanisms that are invoked whenever a disruption occurs in the network.