Ken-ichi Chinen

StarBED and SpringOS: large-scale general purpose network testbed and supporting software

New technologies for the Internet should be evaluated on environments dedicated to experiments, in order to avoid influences to critical services on the Internet. Generally software simulation and small testbed using real nodes are used to satisfy these requirements. There are several stages in developing new technologies, however, and these technologies may not satisfy requirements for all stages.We pointed the gap between the Internet and environment for experiment, especially in aspects of scale, complexity and reality. We proposed and implemented StarBED which is a testbed based on lots of actual nodes, in order to build large-scale, complex and realistic environments for experiments. StarBED consists of 512 PCs and switches which connect these PCs. The PCs on StarBED are designed to run 10 virtual PCs on a physical PC. It enables to build a topology for experiments using up to 5120 nodes. It is difficult to manage and control such a lot of nodes. We also designed and implemented SpringOS, which is a supporting software for making experiments. SpringOS makes the topology and drives the scenario for experiment according to the users configuration automatically.Many experiments were performed on StarBED, and this shows StarBEDs effectiveness.

Automatic configuration and execution of Internet experiments on an actual node-based testbed

Software simulators are widely used for validation and evaluation of new network technologies and services. Using software simulators is a good way to validate algorithms or observing microbehavior of communication protocols. There are, however, problems with software simulators. Most software simulators require target systems to be described under their own modelling scheme, often using their own modelling language. These descriptions are usually different from what will actually be running as products. It is clear that these products should be validated someway. Time required to run software simulation become problematic also, as we try to simulate realistic target system under realistic environment where nontrivial aggregation of complex network services come into play. We adopt an approach to prepare a configurable testbed using actual nodes. Experiment topologies are created on this testbed virtually without changing physical connections, because the cost of building such experiment environments is very large. Since users of such testbed have to perform many steps to execute the desired experiments on such environment, we design the system that supports the users to execute their experiments. Using our system, all the user have to perform is preparing a experiment configuration file. Our system will execute experiments according to the configuration file. This paper shows the design of our supporting system models, steps of experiment with our system and an example of users scenario.

QOMB: A Wireless Network Emulation Testbed

In this paper we present QOMB, a testbed we designed and implemented for the evaluation of wireless network systems, protocols and applications. The testbed uses the wireless network emulation set of tools QOMET so as to reproduce in a wired network, in real time, the wireless network conditions corresponding to a given scenario. In this context QOMET also provides support for features such as realistic virtual 3D environments, and node mobility generation. The infrastructure of QOMB is StarBED, the large-scale network experiment testbed at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Hokuriku Research Center, in Ishikawa, Japan. The multi-hop wireless network emulation experimental results related to OLSR performance analysis in mesh networks and MANETs illustrate the main features and the usability of QOMB.

StarBED2: Large-scale, Realistic and Real-time Testbed for Ubiquitous Networks

Nowadays many new technologies are being developed and introduced for Internet, home networks, and sensor networks. The new technologies must be evaluated in detail before deployment. However the above mentioned networks have a large number of nodes and a complicated topology. Therefore it is difficult to analyze such networks using typical network simulators. Accordingly testbeds for these networks must be able to perform accurately emulation of large-scale networks with a complex topology. In order to implement a testbed that satisfies these requirements, we developed a large-scale, realistic and real-time network testbed, StarBED, using hundreds of PCs, and switched networks. We are now implementing StarBED2, which expands StarBED so as to be suitable for emulating ubiquitous networks by introducing several new concepts. In this paper we describe first the present StarBED, its design concept, overall architecture, implemented functionalities, and some of the experiments we performed. Then we introduce StarBED2, its design policy, architecture, and additional components.

Active tag emulation for pedestrian localization applications

Active tags are currently used for various tasks in transport and distribution industries, for factory automation or asset tracking. Pedestrian localization is another application of active tags, for which we develop a technique and a practical system. Following preliminary real-world experiments with a system prototype, we continued to develop our active tag based pedestrian localization technique by an emulation approach that is discussed in this paper. We use emulation during development so as to be able to perform large-scale experiments with the pedestrian localization system easily and in a repeatable manner. The experimental results show the good agreement that exists between the real-world pedestrian scenario and the measurements made with the emulated system.

CyRIS: a cyber range instantiation system for facilitating security training

Cyber ranges are well-defined controlled virtual environments used in cybersecurity training as an efficient way for trainees to gain practical knowledge through hands-on activities. However, creating an environment that contains all the necessary features and settings, such as virtual machines, network topology and security-related content, is not an easy task, especially for a large number of participants. Therefore, we propose CyRIS (Cyber Range Instantiation System) as a solution towards this problem. CyRIS provides a mechanism to automatically prepare and manage cyber ranges for cybersecurity education and training based on specifications defined by the instructors. In this paper, we first describe the design and implementation of CyRIS, as well as its utilization. We then present an evaluation of CyRIS in terms of feature coverage compared to the Technical Guide to Information Security Testing and Assessment of the U.S National Institute of Standards and Technology, and in terms of functionality compared to other similar tools. We also discuss the execution performance of CyRIS for several representative scenarios.

Emulation framework for the design and development of active RFID tag systems

The design and development of active RFID tag systems requires several iterations, and thorough testing in order to ensure that the prototype systems behave as intended. Facilitating these operations contributes significantly to faster product development and to a quicker time to market. The emulation framework that we present makes it easier to carry out the verification and testing related to the design and development of active RFID tag systems. We illustrate the use of this framework during the design and development of an active RFID tag based pedestrian localization system that is being developed by Panasonic Corporation. In this context emulation was successfully used: (i) to identify active RFID tag firmware issues; (ii) to assess the overall performance of the localization system; (iii) to explore the system parameter space so as to identify the values that provide optimum performance; (iv) to extend the range of tested scenarios beyond what could be done through real-world trials.

Distributed Emulator for a Pedestrian Tracking System Using Active Tags

In this paper we introduce a distributed emulator for a pedestrian tracking system using active tags that is currently being developed by the authors. The emulator works on StarBED which is a network testbed consisting of hundreds of PCs connected to each other by Ethernet. The three major components of the emulator (the processor emulator of the active tag micro-controller, RUNE, and QOMET) are all implemented on StarBED. We present the structure of the emulator, how it functions and the results from the emulation of the pedestrian tracking system. The system met the requirements to create a flexible experimental platform to support the development of the pedestrian tracking system. We confirmed the results obtained by running tests corresponding to a real-world experiment.

Educational environment on StarBED: case study of SOI Asia 2008 Spring Global E-Workshop

Hands-on experiences are indispensable to train IT operators. However, it is often difficult to conduct hands-on practices in many locations due to lack of resources such as PCs and network equipments. The cost of gathering lecturers and participants at one hands-on site is another possible problem in this situation. Utilization of remotely located hands-on environment is one of the solution to solve these problems. StarBED is a testbed facility for conducting network experiments. Installation of any OSes, adjusting the network topologies according to the requirements can be easily realized utilizing StarBED and SpringOS. A software suite, SpringOS, was developed exclusively for automating the experiment setups in StarBED. This facility could be used to address the problems of lack of resources and high cost for traveling. This research conducted a region-wide remote hands-on workshop utilizing the StarBED inviting 42 participants from 10 Asian countries. The workshop was designed so that the remote participants do not have to travel to single place, and prepare same specification PCs at each site. Through the collected data and feedback, the proposed workshop model was proved to be feasible and effective. This paper describes the requirements and approaches for region-wide remote hands-on workshop utilizing StarBED for building target hands-on environment. As the contents of the conducted workshop could be applied to the general IT human resource development programs, this paper could be useful for the future remote hands-on programs to train IT operators.

A rendezvous in network experiment-case study of Kuroyuri

Rendezvous among experiment entities appear in network experiments both implicitly and explicitly. When the driving system for a network experiment testbed supports such rendezvous, users are free to focus on the content of the experiments, without having to consider details of the rendezvous (conditions, timing, etc.) and their execution. This paper shows typical entity activities in network experiments, especially rendezvous, and presents our approach in the Kuroyuri network experiment driving program