Large-scale network protocol emulation on commodity cloud

Abstract

Network emulation allows us to evaluate network protocol implementations, typically in higher fidelity than simulations. This advantage comes at a cost. Emulation often requires much larger IO or computational resources than simulations. As a result, it is common to see some research projects doing simulations with up to hundred thousand nodes while emulations typically scale up to a few hundred nodes. In this paper, we present CloudNet, a network protocol emulation platform that leverages the commodity cloud computing service to scale emulations to thousands of nodes. CloudNet uses a light-weight virtualization technique called LXC containers to emulate a single node. The network protocol code and the protocol state for each node is maintained in its respective container. CloudNet then uses properties of the network topology to determine where to place these containers among many physical machines researchers might rent on the cloud service. CloudNet's careful mapping of nodes to the containers makes network performance more predictable and suitable for emulation even on a shared commodity cloud, which were previously thought to be unsuitable for serious network emulation. Through extensive experiments, we establish that CloudNet is scalable to thousand-node networks while providing accurate emulation results.

Cloud-Based Experimental Platform for the Space-Ground Integrated Network

“…As cloud platforms and virtualization technologies have evolved to be capable of supporting scalable and highfidelity virtual networks, network emulation based on cloud platforms and virtualization has become an emerging research trend [15,16]. For example, based on a commodity cloud platform, a network protocol emulation platform called CloudNet was implemented in [17]; by means of a lightweight virtualization technique called LXC containers, CloudNet is scalable to thousand-node emulated networks. At present, the OpenStack cloud platform [18], which incorporates state-of-the-art technologies, such as softwaredefined networking (SDN) [19], full virtualization (kernel virtual machine, KVM), and lightweight virtualization (Docker), has become the foremost mainstream cloud platform in the industry, with features such as high efficiency and stability; consequently, it is considered a good choice for developing emulation platforms [15,20].…”

High-Fidelity Router Emulation Technologies Based on Multi-Scale Virtualization

“…But limited by the number of physical devices, it is not realistic to use physical networks for large-scale cyberspace security technology verification and offensive-defensive drills [1,2]. Emulation technology based on virtualization has the advantages of high controllability and excellent scalability [3,4], so it has become a significant tool to reproduce complex or large-scale network topologies. At present, researchers design virtual routers by loading routing software into virtual machines (VM) [5,6], and using Linux Traffic Control (TC) to control the bandwidth on a VM's network interface card (NIC) to emulate the transmission bandwidth of the physical Ethernet (e.g., 100 Mbps or 1000 Mbps) [7,8].…”