EmPOWER: A Testbed for Network Function Virtualization Research and Experimentation

Abstract

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are making their way into the research agenda of all the major players in the networking domain. Parallely, testbeds and experimental facilities are widely regarded as the fundamental step-stone to future "clean slate" networking. However, designing and building experimental facilities can hardly be considered a trivial step for either researchers and practitioners. Scale, flexibility, and ease of use are just some of the challenges faced by a testbed designer. These considerations are at the base of efforts such as GENI in USA, AKARI in Japan, FEDERICA, NOVI and OFELIA in Europe which provide federated and open facilities for the Future Internet research agenda. Albeit the importance of such facilities is unquestioned, today there is still a dearth of testbed exploiting SDN and NFV concepts in the wireless networking domain. In this paper we present EmPOWER an experimental testbed which aims at filling this gap by offering an open platform on top of which novel concepts can be tested at scale. The EmPOWER testbed is composed by 30 nodes and is currently used by both undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Trento and by the research staff at CREATE-NET.