A Stance on Emulation and Testbeds, and a Survey of Network Emulators and Testbeds

Emulations and testbeds are popular tools in networking research. However, what differentiates testbeds from emulations is not terminologically clear. In this paper, the authors first discuss the terms emulation and testbed, and present the reflexivity principle for identifying testbeds. They then present a survey of forty two network emulators and testbeds reported in the literature, categorizing them according to the approaches used. Another eighteen that can be added to this survey as future work are also identified.