Mapping Resources for Network Emulation with Heuristic and Genetic Algorithms

For emulation-based experiments of network technologies, the network topology, which researchers require, must be mapped to the topology of network emulation testbed. This network testbed mapping problem is discussed and formulated in this paper; an evaluation function is also defined in which both the number of network links and bandwidth are considered. This paper also gives a solution for considering delay-node. Based on the model, an iteration-based heuristic algorithm is presented, and genetic algorithm is also implemented. Evaluation result shows that both heuristic and genetic algorithms can find near-optimal solutions in reasonable time, while heuristic algorithm behaves better than genetic algorithm when the number of nodes increases, since it can find solutions in much less time than genetic algorithm.