Integrated network experimentation for QoS measurements in opaque MANETs

Integrated network experimentation often combines real nodes with simulated ones, each modeling different portions of the topology, in the same experimental run. They enable new validation techniques and larger experiments than obtainable using real elements alone. Integrated experiments can be particularly useful in testing and validating QoS mechanisms for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), when the characteristics of the intermediate wireless network segments are not observable from the end segments, and as a consequence these intermediate segments have to be treated as opaque networks; and also when there is a need to conduct experiments in a real MANET environment at a scale larger than just a few nodes. End‐to‐end QoS assurance for such opaque networks, consisting of admission control and quality adjustment, can be based on techniques for dynamically measuring throughput representing the state of these networks. In this paper, we describe a distributed and hybrid testbed that has been deployed for running large‐scale integrated experiments to demonstrate the efficacy of a measurement‐based QoS solution. The infrastructure for the testbed provides an integrated platform consisting of real nodes running the actual software under test, augmented with a simulated network environment. We define a set of metrics and run experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of the QoS solution as well the performance of the deployed testbed. We propose an alternative architecture that employs a Xen‐based virtualization of the real nodes from the deployed testbed. We compare the performances of the virtualized architecture with the deployed architecture vis‐à‐vis latency and resource utilization. Our goal is to establish benchmarks for running large‐scale experiments on performance and QoS measurements in virtualized environments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.