Virtual wall

The iLab.t Virtual Wall facility is a generic test environment for advanced network, distributed software and service evaluation, and supports scalability research. 

The virtual wall facilities consist of 100 nodes (dual processor, dual core servers, 6x1 Gb/s interfaces per node)interconnected via a non-blocking 1.5 Tb/s VLAN Ethernet switch, and a display wall (20 monitors) for experiment visualization. Each server is connected with 4 or 6 gigabit Ethernet links to the switch. The Virtual Wall nodes can be assigned different functionalities ranging from terminal, server, network node, and impairment node. The nodes can be connected to test boxes for wireless terminals, generic test equipment, simulation nodes (for combined emulation and simulation) etc. The Virtual Wall features Full Automatic Install for fast context switching (e.g. 1 week experiments), as well as remote access.

These iLab.t Virtual Wall emulation facilities are available to experimenters. Some use cases and test scenarios are:

  • A large number of nodes for use in user or control plane experiments. Some of the nodes can be connected to real network elements (switches, routers, wireless nodes).
  • Each node is fully dedicated and under full control of one experiment, so the users can test all kind of operating system images, configurations.
  • Some of the nodes may be used for network emulation (bandwidth, delay, packet loss) to enable realistic experiments with data traffic between servers/clients. As such, large numbers of nodes are necessary.