In recent years, the software-defined networking (SDN) paradigm has been deployed in various types of networks, including wireless sensor networks (WSN), wide area networks (WAN) and data centers. Given the wide range of SDN domain applicability and the large-scale environments where the paradigm is being deployed, creating a full real test environment is a complex and costly task. To address these problems, software-based simulations are employed to validate the proposed solutions before they are deployed in real networks. However, simulations are constrained by relying on replicating previously saved logs and datasets and do not use real time hardware data. The current article addresses this limitation by creating a novel hybrid software and hardware SDN simulation testbed where data from real hardware sensors are directly used in a Mininet emulated network. The article conceptualizes a new approach for expanding Mininet's capabilities and provides implementation details on how to perform simulations in different contexts (network scalability, parallel computations and portability). To validate the design proposals and highlight the benefits of the proposed hybrid testbed solution, specific scenarios are provided for each design idea. Furthermore, using the proposed hybrid testbed, new datasets can be easily generated for specific scenarios and replicated in more complex research.
Keywords: Mininet and Mininet-WiFi; hybrid testbed; network sensors; quality of experiments; simulation; software; software-defined network; system testing.