Mininet-WiFi: Emulating software-defined wireless networks

TLDR

Wireless network density is increasing, making cost‑effective, efficiently managed solutions challenging; while vendors provide high‑performance but costly single‑vendor systems, SDN offers virtualization and programmability, yet rapid prototyping tools for wireless SDN are lacking. This paper introduces Mininet‑WiFi, a tool for emulating wireless OpenFlow/SDN scenarios to enable high‑fidelity experiments that replicate real networking environments. Mininet‑WiFi extends the Mininet emulator with virtual wireless stations and access points, preserving SDN capabilities and lightweight virtualization, and outlines its applications, benefits, and current limitations. Two IEEE 802.11 use cases demonstrate the functionality of the open‑source Mininet‑WiFi development.

Abstract

As the density of wireless networks continues to grow with more clients, more base stations, and more traffic, designing cost-effective wireless solutions with efficient resource usage and ease to manage is an increasing challenging task due to the overall system complexity. A number of vendors offer scalable and high-performance wireless networks but at a high cost and commonly as a single-vendor solution, limiting the ability to innovate after roll-out. Recent Software-Defined Networking (SDN) approaches propose new means for network virtualization and programmability advancing the way networks can be designed and operated, including user-defined features and customized behaviour even at run-time. However, means for rapid prototyping and experimental evaluation of SDN for wireless environments are not yet available. This paper introduces Mininet-WiFi as a tool to emulate wireless OpenFlow/SDN scenarios allowing high-fidelity experiments that replicate real networking environments. Mininet-WiFi augments the well-known Mininet emulator with virtual wireless stations and access points while keeping the original SDN capabilities and the lightweight virtualization software architecture. We elaborate on the potential applications of Mininet-Wifi and discuss the benefits and current limitations. Two use cases based on IEEE 802.11 demonstrate available functionality in our open source developments.