An Interactive Interface for Information Exchanging between QualNet and Virtual Machine for IP Based Network

Recently, the hardware-in-the-loop simulation for protocol design, software testing, and device model testing has been widely considered for the IP-based communication network owning to a higher authenticity and accuracy. However, as the number of real devices increases, a huge testing cost becomes inevitable. In this paper, an interactive approach for information exchanging between network simulator and virtual machine for IP based network simulation is proposed. Together with the interactive interface, the data packets generated by the network software or the model of real network device, which is needed to be tested and is installed on the virtual machine, are transmitted from the corresponding node to the target node in QualNet based virtual network. Based on the proposed interactive approach, a large-scale network emulator, which effectively reduce the testing cost, can be composed by the network simulator and the virtual machine together with the network device image and software. Simulation results demonstrate that the interactive interface can realize the information exchanging between network simulator, i.e., QualNet, and virtual machine, with an acceptable delay and rare packet loss.