Abstract
The Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) is a community-driven research and development effort to build a collaborative and exploratory network experimentation platform—a ‘virtual laboratory’ for the design, implementation, and evaluation of future networks. The PrimoGENI project enables real-time network simulation by extending an existing network simulator to become part of the GENI federation to support large-scale experiments involving physical, simulated, and emulated network entities. In this paper, we describe a novel design of PrimoGENI, which aims at supporting realistic, scalable, and flexible network experiments with real-time simulation and emulation capabilities. We present a flexible emulation infrastructure that allows both remote client machines, local cluster nodes running virtual machines, and external networks to seamlessly interoperate with the simulated network running within a designated ‘slice’ of resources. We present the results of our preliminary validation and performance studies to demonstrate the capabilities as well as limitations of our approach.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The latest TAP device implementation prohibits writing IP packets to the kernel, possibly for security reasons. We choose to use a raw socket instead for the EDD to send IP packets.
References
Apache MINA Project (2011). The Apache Multipurpose Infrastructure for Network Applications (MINA). http://mina.apache.org/.
Barford P and Landweber L (2003). Bench-style network research in an Internet instance laboratory. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 33 (3): 21–26.
Bart De Schuymer (2011). Ethernet Bridge Tables (Ebtables). http://ebtables.sourceforge.net/.
Bavier A et al (2006). In VINI veritas: Realistic and controlled network experimentation. In: Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGCOMM Conference, Pisa, Italy; ACM: New York, NY, pp 3–14.
Breslau L et al (2000). Advances in network simulation. IEEE Computer 33 (5): 59–67.
Cowie J, Nicol D and Ogielski A (1999). Modeling the global internet. Computing in Science and Engineering 1 (1): 42–50.
DeHart J et al (2006). The open network laboratory. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin 38 (1): 107–111.
Erazo M, Li Y and Liu J (2009). SVEET! A scalable virtualized evaluation environment for TCP. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks Communities and Workshops (Trident-Com’09), http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TRIDENTCOM.2009.4976227 April.
Fall K (1999). Network emulation in the Vint/NS simulator. In: Proceedings of the 4th IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC’99); IEEE Computer Society: Los Alamitos, CA, pp 244–250.
Flux Research Group (2011). ProtoGENI. http://www.protogeni.net/.
George Karypis Lab (2011). METIS. http://www.cs.umn.edu/∼metis/.
Gupta D et al (2006). To infinity and beyond: Time-warped network emulation. In: Proceedings of the 3rd USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI’06); San Jose, CA, USENIX Association: Berkeley, CA.
Liu J (2008). A primer for real-time simulation of large-scale networks. In: Simulation Symposium, 2008. ANSS 2008. 41st Annual, pp 85–94, doi=10.1109/ANSS-41.2008.18.
Liu J and Li Y (2008). On the performance of a hybrid network traffic model. Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 16 (6): 656–669.
Liu J et al (2009). A real-time network simulation infrastructure based on OpenVPN. Journal of Systems and Software 82 (3): 473–485.
Liu X, Xia H and Chien AA (2003). Network emulation tools for modeling grid behavior. In: Proceedings of 3rd IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid’03).
Modeling and Networking Systems Research Group (2011). PRIME. http://www.primessf.net/.
OpenVZ (2011). Container-based virtualization for Linux. http://wiki.openvz.org.
OpenVZ VETH (2011). Virtual Ethernet Device. http://wiki.openvz.org/Veth.
ORCA-BEN Project (2011). The Open Resource Control Architecture (ORCA) and The Breakable Experimental Network in GENI. https://geni-orca.renci.org/trac/.
Peterson L, Anderson T, Culler D and Roscoe T (2002). A blueprint for introducing disruptive technology into the internet. SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 33 (1): 59–64.
Raychaudhuri D, Ott M and Secker I (2005). Overview of the ORBIT radio grid testbed for evaluation of next-generation wireless network protocols. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the DEvelopment of NeTworks and COMmunities. IEEE Computer Society: Washington DC, pp 308–309.
Riley GF (2003). The Georgia tech network simulator. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Models, Methods and Tools for Reproducible Network Research (MoMeTools’03), Karlsruhe, Germany; ACM: New York, NY, pp 5–12.
Simmonds R and Unger BW (2003). Towards scalable network emulation. Computer Communications 26 (3): 264–277.
Spring N, Peterson L, Bavier A and Pai V (2006). Using planetlab for network research: Myths, realities, and best practices. ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review 40 (1): 17–24.
Stephane Apiou (2011). FUSE Union Filesystem (FunionFS). http://funionfs.apiou.org/.
The GENI Project Office (2011a). The Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI). http://groups.geni.net/.
The GENI Project Office (2011b). GENI System Overview. http://groups.geni.net/geni/wiki/GeniSysOvrvw.
Vahdat A et al (2002). Scalability and accuracy in a large scale network emulator. In: SIGOPS Operating System Review, ACM: New York, NY, pp 271–284.
White B et al (2002). An integrated experimental environment for distributed systems and networks. In: SIGOPS Operating System Review, ACM: New York, NY, pp 255–270.
Yaun G et al (2003). Large-scale network simulation techniques: Examples of TCP and OSPF models. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 33 (3): 27–41.
Zhou J, Ji Z, Takai M and Bagrodia R (2004). MAYA: Integrating hybrid network modeling to the physical world. ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS) 14 (2): 149–169.
Acknowledgements
We want to thank our undergraduate students, Eduardo Tibau and Eduardo Peña, for the development of slingshot. The PrimoGENI project is part of GENI's Spiral 2 prototyping and development effort, funded by the National Science Foundation through GENI Project Office (GPO). The PrimoGENI project is built on PRIME, which is also funded by NSF through the grant CNS-0836408.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Van Vorst, N., Erazo, M. & Liu, J. PrimoGENI for hybrid network simulation and emulation experiments in GENI. J Simulation 6, 179–192 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/jos.2012.5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jos.2012.5