A Hybrid Testbed for Wireless Mesh Networks

The study of wireless and mobile networks is mainly based on simulations. Although simulation environments offer a convenient combination of flexibility and controllability, their largest disadvantage is that the results gained by using them are difficult to transfer into reality. This is due to the complex environment of mobile and wireless networks. In this paper we introduce a hybrid testbed approach, which consists of real mesh nodes and a virtualization environment. This combination provides on the one hand a flexible development environment for distributed network protocols and applications and on the other hand a high degree in realism. Therefore, it allows the design and conduction of large scale networks where the results are easily transferred to the real world