Integration of heterogeneous networking testbeds

As networking research expands into new frontiers, the research community has felt a need for a heterogeneous networking research infrastructure to experiment with the interaction and integration of different types of networks, and to test the performance of various networking protocols in realistic environments. This requirement has led to the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) initiative to create a global infrastructure for conducting networking experiments across diverse substrates such as wired (local and wide-area), wireless, sensor and cellular networks. In this paper, we discuss and present two models for building such an experimental infrastructure. The first model enables a wired testbed to link with wireless edge nodes during an experiment, whereas the second model enables a wireless testbed to link to wired testbeds. Proof-of-concept experiments are also presented reinforcing the usefulness of the models in terms of facilitating experiments over the integrated heterogeneous infrastructure.