Challenges of using wireless network testbeds: a case study on ORBIT

  • Authors:

  • Razvan Beuran;Yasuo Tan;Yoichi Shinoda

  • Affiliations:

  • National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Nomi, Ishikawa, Japan;Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Nomi, Ishikawa, Japan;Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Nomi, Ishikawa, Japan

  • Venue:
  • WiNTECH '11 Proceedings of the 6th ACM international workshop on Wireless network testbeds, experimental evaluation and characterization
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Wireless network testbeds have emerged as a valuable alternative to network simulation, but actually using them for experiments presents a number of challenges. We use the ORBIT testbed at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA as a case study to illustrate the most important issues in this context. We performed several types of evaluation tests on ORBIT, as well as a series of equivalent experiments with up to 50 nodes, which were done also on the QOMB wireless network emulation testbed, and by using the QualNet network simulator. We conclude that a testbed such as ORBIT provides a viable approach to network testing, although this is conditioned by an awareness of the potential pitfalls that may affect experimental results; a series of lessons we learned from our experience is included in the paper. We also show that real-world trials on ORBIT can be broadly reproduced through emulation and even through simulation.