This work was supported by the TRUST Center (NSF award number CCF-0424422)

Emulation of Abilene Network using DETERJohn Mela1, Blaine Nelson2, Saurabh Amin2, Suzanna Schmeelk2, Prof. S. Shankar Sastry2

AbstractSecurity of networked computing systems has become increasingly paramount. The daily function of society hinges on the safe and reliable operation of these infrastructures. The detection of attack traffic on network infrastructures necessitates experimentation on accurately modeled emulations. In this research, a model of the Abilene topology was created using the DETERlab testbed. Network traffic flows were emulated on top of this model. The specification of Abilene's traffic flows could be used to represent the network's background traffic in scale. As this model more closely imitates Abilene both in structure and behavior, a door to extensive experimentation is opened.

MethodThe creation of our topology involved 5 steps

1. Created Abilene backbone in Network Simulator(NS) using DETERlab

2. Paired backbone routers with external interface as illustrated in Figure 2.

3. Links are specified individually for unique throughput and latency customization

4. Converted Abilene routing matrix to NS syntax

5. Confirmed manual traffic routes

#!/usr/local/bin/bash

NODES="ATLAng ATM5 CHINng DNVRng HSTNng IPLSng_ KSCYng LOSAng NYCMng SNVAng STTLng WASHng_

ATLAext ATM5ext CHINext DNVRext HSTNext_ IPLSext KSCYext LOSAext NYCMext SNVAext STTLext WASHext"

for NODE in $NODESdo for HOST in $NODES do echo "$NODE is pinging: $HOST" ssh -o "StrictHostKeyChecking no" $NODE.jnmela-abilene.trust-reu_

"ping -q -c 2 $HOST || echo_ "ERROR: $NODE FAILED TO CONTACT $HOST" >> brokenroutes.dump"

donedone

exit 0

Route Verification

Backbone Paired with External

Interfaces

# Representation of Abilene Topology in NSset ns [new Simulator]source tb_compat.tcl#Create the backbone nodesforeach node { ATLAng ATM5 CHINng DNVRng HSTNng IPLSng_

KSCYng LOSAng NYCMng SNVAng STTLng WASHng control } {

#Create new node set $node [$ns node]

#Define the OS image tb-set-node-os [set $node] Ubuntu804-STD

#Startup scripts tb-set-node-startcmd [set $node]_ "sudo python /share/seer/v160/experiment-setup.py Basic"}

Route 1Route 2....Route N

Python

Routing Matrix to NS$src add-route ..$src add-route ......$src add-route ..

Topology Specification

Recommendations for Future Study• Emulate link throughputs and latencies

• Implement background traffic generation

Figure 1

Figure 2

Implementation

Figure 4

ConclusionOur research attained three goals. The first was the construction of the Abilene topology using DETER. This was accomplished by specifying the backbone routers, external interfaces, and link information for each node. The second was the conversion of an Abilene routing matrix into NS syntax. We used python to read the routing information from the matrix, confirm that each route was complete, and output the NS syntax to specify these routes in DETER. Third, we verified that the implemented routes functioned in our emulation using bash scripting and the ping utility.

1Youngstown State University, 2University of California Berkeley

Figure 3