Performance Evaluation of a Hybrid Testbed for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMN) are supposed to provide flexible and high-performance wireless network access for large indoor and outdoor areas, e.g., community networking and metropolitan area networks. However, these claims are mostly substantiated by simulation studies only as real testbeds are inflexible and associated with high maintenance effort. In this work we present a hybrid, i.e., partly real and partly virtualized, WMN testbed. This provides a high degree of realism while still allowing the flexibility known from simulations. In addition to the architectural discussion we present measurement results from our testbed highlighting the optimization potential of small protocol parameter changes.