Emulation-Based ICT System Resiliency Verification for Disaster Situations

Disaster situations require resilient ICT systems in order to provide as good as possible communication conditions in such catastrophic circumstances. The resiliency verification of ICT systems is however difficult, because reproducing large-scale disaster conditions in production networks is impossible without affecting their users. In this paper we present an emulation-based approach for evaluating the resiliency of ICT systems in disaster situations. This is achieved by reproducing disaster-like conditions in a emulated environment running on a large-scale test bed on which actual network protocols and applications are executed in real time. The experimental results presented in the paper demonstrate how the effects of both the emulated disasters and those of the recovery technologies we subsequently deploy can be quantified objectively. This methodology can be used to improve the resilience of the systems under test.