Virtual Ad hoc Network testbeds for high fidelity testing of tactical network applications

Testing of applications for tactical MANETs poses a special technical challenge due to the difficulty of conducting experiments in an ad hoc network environment at a scale larger than a few nodes. One approach is to conduct experiments in a testbed that can imitate a tactical MANET to the highest feasible level of fidelity. For applications, this is achieved by executing unmodified software under real operating systems and realistic hardware resources. For the network, it is achieved by using an emulated/simulated network that behaves like a real MANET in some/all layers of the protocol stack. In this paper, we describe the current state of virtual ad hoc network (VAN) testbed technologies for constructing testbeds that allow testing unmodified tactical applications over simulated MANETs, including network-aware applications. On the application side, we employ Xen-based virtualization to provide high fidelity of application execution environment, testbed resource scalability and manageability. On the network side, we employ user-provided simulation models and enable seamless integration of the hosts that run the software under test with virtual nodes in a simulated network. Our goal is to enable running experiments over large-scale (500-1000 nodes) MANETs using VAN testbeds.