NITOS

NITOS (Network Implementation Testbed using Open Source code) is a wireless experimental testbed that is designed to achieve reproducibility of experimentation, while also supporting evaluation of protocols and applications in real-world settings. It has been developed in the city of Volos, Greece by OneLab partner CERTH, in association with NITLab, the Network Implementation Testbed Laboratory of the Computer and Communication Engineering Department at the University of Thessaly. NITOS consists of nodes based on commercial Wi-Fi cards and Linux-based open-source platforms, which are deployed both inside and outside of the University of Thessaly's campus building, as illustrated in Figure 1 below. Currently, two kind of nodes are supported: orbit-like nodes (shown in yellow) and diskless Alix2c2 PCEngines nodes (shown in blue).

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

NITOS is remotely accessible and gives users the opportunity to implement their protocols and study their behaviour in a real-case environment. Users can perform their experiments by reserving slices of the tesbted though the NITOS scheduler.

The control and management of the testbed is achieved by using cOntrol Management Framework (OMF) open-source software. OMF simplifies the procedure of experiment defining and offers a more centralized way of deploying experiments and retrieving measurements.

CERTH, as part of the OneLab project, collaborates with other European institutes and it is in the process of federating NITOS with other tetsbed facilities, in particular PlanetLab Europe, providing in this way access to a unified European experimental infrastructure.

Detailed information about NITOS testbed use can be found on the NITOS Site. Instructions for using the NITOS scheduler are also available online.