Supervision : Marcelo DIAS DE AMORIM

Co-supervision : CHAUDET Claude

Virtualization of fixes and mobiles networks

Several tools can be used when it comes to assess the performance or the proper functioning of a protocol or a distributed algorithm. From the experimentation platform to the analytical model through simulation, each method has advantages and disadvantages and it is often necessary to use a combination of tools to get a full assessment. Virtualization has recently been added to the list of relevant tools and limitations are still poorly identified. Based on a state of the art reporting different features and characteristics specific to different testing methods, this thesis aims to provide some assessment of these innovative experiments tools. Realism is essential in any experiment. However, this goal is often antagonistic with the representativeness of the experience. Indeed, the use of a particular platform generally limit the study to a particular scenario or a class of scenario. Virtualization is an interesting addition to the experiments because it allows to generalize the results of an experiment reusing the same software and the same operating system. It allows to increase the extent and diversity of assessments without requiring additional development. Concerning the study of fixed networks, we propose and evaluate VIRCONEL, a tool with a graphical interface for the definition of virtual network architecture spread over several physical hosts as well as the realization of scenario under realistic conditions. VIRCONEL allows us to assess the relevance of the use of virtualization based on containers for network experiment. In particular, we used this tool to assess ARMATURE, an overlay that provides a highly resistant communication service for critical infrastructures operators. For the study of multi-hop wireless networks, we first propose SILUMOD, dedicated to the definition of mobility patterns language. SILUMOD allow to define easily the characteristics of the movement of a mobile and its behavior with respect to its environment node using keywords and specific operators. We propose and then evaluate VIRMANEL, a tool for managing connections between multi-hop mobile nodes represented by virtual machines using an algorithm optimizing the process of updating the effective links between mobile nodes. VIRMANEL features also a dedicated graphical user interface for the observation of the behavior of mobile nodes. By combining SILUMOD and VIRMANEL, we obtain a tool to simulate the movement of a mobile node while evaluating and establishing potential connections between mobile nodes. We conducted several evaluations of these tools and this work shows that if virtualization is indeed a relevant and useful tool for network experiment, it also has its limits and the realism of the results depends on the experimental conditions. We discuss this problem and propose at the end of this thesis, some criteria allowing an experimenter to assess the degree of trust to give an evaluation result .

2014-2015 Publications

• 2015
  • Y. Benchaib, S. Secci, Ch. Phung : “Transparent Cloud Access Performance Augmentation via an MPTCP-LISP Connection Proxy”, Proc. of 2015 ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems (ANCS 2015), Oakland, California, United States, pp. 201-202 (2015)
• 2014
  • Y. Benchaib : “Virtualisation des réseaux fixes et mobiles”, thesis, phd defence 03/24/2014, supervision Dias de amorim, Marcelo, co-supervision : Chaudet, Claude (2014)