vBET: a VM-based emulation testbed

Abstract

With the increasing requirement of robustness and predictability for network protocols and distributed systems, it becomes necessary to develop realistic, customizable, and scalable emulation testbeds for the testing and evaluation of network and distributed protocols. A number of recently proposed emulation testbeds have clearly demonstrated the advantage and promise of this approach. Meanwhile, more efforts are necessary to achieve higher degree of flexibility and customizability, especially for the creation of arbitrary network topology and for the customization of network-level entities.In this paper, we present vBET, an efficient and flexible emulation testbed using the virtual machine technology. Based on Linux, vBET can be installed in a high-end desktop or a commodity server and is therefore easily deployable in a research lab. vBET creates a virtual distributed environment with both network infrastructure and end systems. Each entity, such as a router, switch, firewall, or application-level proxy, is emulated by a virtual machine running unmodified system or application software. The entities emulated by vBET are user-configurable. Furthermore, the same (physical) vBET server can be easily setup as testbed for different experiments, such as Internet routing, distributed firewalls, and peer-to-peer networks.We describe the design, implementation, and application of vBET. For the design and implementation, we present key enabling techniques including virtual OS, virtual networking, and small-footprint file system. For the application of vBET, we demonstrate the creation of different experimental environments using vBET, including OSPF routing, distributed firewall, and Chord peer-to-peer network. These experiments reflect the versatility, customizability, and efficiency of vBET.