Using virtualization and live migration in a scalable mobile wireless testbed

Abstract

Laboratory-based mobile wireless testbeds such as MeshTest and the CMU Wireless Emulator are powerful platforms that allow users to perform controlled, repeatable, mobile wireless experiments in the lab. Unfortunately such systems can only accommodate 10-20 nodes in an experiment. We have designed and built a prototype of a system that uses software virtualization and live migration to facilitate experiments involving intermittently connected networks with many multiples of the number of physical nodes available on such a testbed.

Building a system like this presents many technical and research challenges. In this paper, we will describe the physical construction and software architecture of the system while providing a discussion on the research issues that we are currently addressing.

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Index Terms

• Computing methodologies

  • Modeling and simulation

    • Model development and analysis

      • Modeling methodologies

• General and reference

  • Cross-computing tools and techniques

    • Performance

• Hardware

  • Communication hardware, interfaces and storage

• Networks

  • Network types

    • Mobile networks

    • Wireless access networks