Laboratory

Our group set up a laboratory composed of several elements (hardware facilities and software tools) that, properly integrated, provide a valuable support to research and design and development activities. The main components are:

  • NS2 simulators
  • Satellite Network Emulation Platform (SNEP) emulator
  • OpenSand DVB-RCS2 emulator
  • NS3 and S-NS3 network simulator
  • Custom optimized TCP versions for NS2, NS3 and Linux, including TCP Wave
  • Matlab software
  • VIBeS Project integrated testbed
  • SHINE Project integrated testbed
  • VoIP equipment, phones and PBX to test voice services on landline and satellite links
  • IP-TV cameras and baseline Encoders to test video streaming services on landline and satellite links
  • Tooway satellite terminal (Ka-band two-way SatCom access to Internet)
  • COMBO device (https://bigbluinternet.it/)
  • ADSL connectivity
  • 4G Picocell with Android testing smartphones

In addition, we have access to several laboratory equipment, including High-performance Workstations, pre-installed virtual environments (bare-metal hypervisors, Virtual Machines, OpenStack), network devices and routers, development environments and broadband Internet connectivity through Garr National high-speed network connected to the research European Internet infrastructure Geant/Grid.

Main Simulation Platforms

The research group acquired, over a 20-years period, capabilities in developing and configuring network simulation software, relying mainly on NS-2 and NS-3. Following the cutting-edge research activities in the frame of national and international funded project, a number of simulated communication environment have been built and made available for performance assessment overall the TCP/IP protocol stack: satellite DVB-RCS/RDS2 MAC layer, DAMA algorithms, Mobile IP and QoS managers, transport layer optimizations (TCP Noordwijk, TCP Wave, PEPs), IoT MQTT and HTTP traffic loaders, DASH applications, just to provide some tangible examples.

Main Emulation Platforms

The research group has relevant skills on TCP/IP technologies, Linux networking and advanced network protocols, which have allowed to extend most of the simulation modules on a real-time emulation platform. This latter has the main advantage to allow experimentation with real applications and network stacks as well as direct integration with real data networks and real Hardware equipment. Successful cases are represented by the design and testing of Satellite broadband services, telemedicine services, VoIP applications and live IP streaming solutions (H.265) over satellite. The emulation can significantly empower and extend the outcomes of the research activities allowing convergence between innovative protocols and consolidated network architectures and technologies. We can offer the capability to participate to R&D projects, to support companies in the design phase or to offer teaching programs.

Testbed Hosting capabilities

Thanks to the high speed connectivity available at the University of Rome Tor Vergata premises with a large pool of public IPs available, we have the possibility of hosting projects testbeds, Virtual Machines and network equipment which require h24 availability. Examples are the SHINE project and VIBeS project testbeds, which are completely hosted in our labs and reachable remotely.

SHINE testbed

In our labs we are hosting the SHINE testbed, associated to ongoing activities for the secure IP broadcasting and video-streaming services, leveraging VSAT connectivity. In the first stages of the project, the VSAT connectivity was emulated using a virtualized...

4G picocell

In the frame of VIBeS project, we have installed a 4G/LTE private cell at our labs, provided by Athonet: https://athonet.cloud/ .

OpenSand

We have several pre-configured installations of the OpenSand SatCom emulator. Please refer to the official Web page for further references: http://opensand.org/  

VIBeS testbed

This testbed includes a set of virtual servers and network resources suitable to reproduce a complex satellite enabled NFV-compliant testing setup. More specifically, it includes a Core Network for end user access, with 4G radio (RAN) and 5G virtual functions...

TCP Wave

TCP Wave is a disruptive TCP variant with sender-only modifications. TCP Wave changed the data transport paradigms: from window based to burst-based transmissions, from congestion reaction to proactive congestion avoidance, from slow start to quick start, from buffer...

Tooway

Thanks to the collaboration with Open-Sky, within the COMBO SBB project, co-funded by European Space Agency ESA, our lab has a bi-directional satellite broadband connection, through Ka-Sat di Eutelsat satellite. Available bandwidth is 20 Mbit/s in download, and 5...

SNEP (Satellite Network Emulator Platform)

This emulation environment is tailored to reproduce the behaviour of a real satellite DVB-RCS system from the network point of view, including MAC and PHY simulation (e.g., DAMA bandwidth on demand, channel error models), and part of SatLabs specification (QoS, C2P)...

DAMA DVB-RCS NS2 patch

DAMA DVB-RCS NS2 patch available To apply on latest ns-2.32 version, it makes possible to test TCP connections behavior in simulated DVB-RCS environment with a DAMA shared return channel. Satellite Terminals can be configured so that capacity is requested with CRA,...