Faster Control Plane Experimentation with Horse

TL;DR

Horse is a hybrid simulation-emulation framework that enables fast and realistic control plane experiments in computer networks by decoupling control and data planes.

Contribution

We introduce Horse, a novel hybrid approach combining emulated control plane with simulated data plane to improve experiment speed without losing realism.

Findings

Significantly faster control plane experiments.

Maintains high control plane realism.

Outperforms existing simulation and emulation solutions.

Abstract

Simulation and emulation are popular approaches for experimentation in Computer Networks. However, due to their respective inherent drawbacks, existing solutions cannot perform both fast and realistic control plane experiments. To close this gap, we introduce Horse. Horse is a hybrid solution with an emulated control plane, for realism, and simulated data plane, for speed. Our decoupling of the control and data plane allows us to speed up the experiments without sacrificing control plane realism.