A Virtual Platform for Network Experimentation

Although the diversity of platforms for network experimentation is a boon to the development of protocols and distributed systems, it is challenging to exploit its benefits. Implementing or adapting the systems under test for such heterogeneous environments as network simulators, network emulators, testbeds, and end systems is immensely time and work intensive. In this paper, we present VIPE, a unified virtual platform for network experimentation, that slashes the porting effort. It allows to smoothly evolve a single implementation of a distributed system or protocol from its design up into its deployment by leveraging any form of network experimentation tool available.