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NITOS test platform made public
Wednesday, 30 September 2009 07:44
OneLab partner CERTH (the Centre for Research & Technology Hellas), leaders of the wireless work package (Work Package 6) have recently made the NITOS testbed publicly available to researchers. NITOS, which stands for Network Implementation Testbed using Open Source code, is a wireless testbed that consists of nodes based on OMF open-source software. It has been developed in association with NITLab, the Network Implementation Testbed Laboratory of the Computer and Communication Engineering Department at University of Thessaly.

NITOS testbed is deployed both inside and outside of the University of Thessaly's campus building, as illustrated in Figure 1 below.  Currently, it supports two kinds of nodes: orbit-like nodes (shown in yellow) and diskless nodes (shown in blue).

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Figure 1:  Exterior of Glavani Building's testbed deployment at the University of Thessaly

The NITOS platform is open to any researchers who would like to test their protocols in a real-time wireless network. It offers the opportunity to implement protocols and study their behaviour in a custom tailor-made environment.

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Figure 2:  ORBIT-like nodes

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Figure 3: Diskless nodes

The testbed can be accessed remotely and experiments can exploit the beneficial slicing features that the NITOS scheduler provides. It offers a sophisticated system of user-node allocation, as multiple users can run their experiments simultaneously, sharing the testbed's resources. In addition, users are prevented from interfering with each other, as they operate in different frequency spectrums.

NITOS, a stand-alone testbed, is constantly in the process of extending its testbed capabilities. In the long term, NITOS intends to expand its deployment with new nodes and develop a new module for the NITOS scheduler that will enable an offline scheduling process based on the preferences and requirements that a user gives. To this end, NITOS, along with a number of other testbeds under development by the wireless work package, intends to federate with the PlanetLab Europe testbed before the end of the OneLab project's second phase in September 2010.