An emulation architecture for the integration of virtual and physical networks

Abstract

Network emulation is an essential tool to evaluate network protocols and network security technologies. Leveraging on the cloud computing services, a hybrid network emulation platform integrating virtual and physical networks is proposed in this paper. With cloud services, heterogeneous and scalable virtual networks can be built. By accessing physical networks, the whole platform will be improved with high precision. Software defined network (SDN) switch is applied in the platform. With its OpenFlow protocol, packet flows can be controlled with flexibility to support transparent network emulation. Meanwhile, SDN switches cooperate with physical switches to provide the platform with experiments isolation and reconfigurability. The attributes of any virtual-physical link are also considered to emulate real networks with latency, bandwidth and loss rate. Extensive experiments proved that the proposed platform is capable to emulate networks with scalability, transparency, and can further support multiple experiments isolation.