OpenSN: An Open Source Library for Emulating LEO Satellite Networks
Wenhao Lu, Zhiyuan Wang, Hefan Zhang, Shan Zhang, Hongbin Luo

TL;DR
OpenSN is an open source, container-based library for efficiently emulating large-scale LEO satellite networks, enabling scalable and reproducible research with significant performance improvements.
Contribution
OpenSN introduces a scalable, efficient, and extensible container-based emulation framework for LEO satellite networks, surpassing existing tools in speed and flexibility.
Findings
Constructs mega-constellations 5X-10X faster than StarryNet
Updates link state 2X-4X faster than LeoEM
Successfully emulates 4408 satellites in a five-shell Starlink constellation
Abstract
Low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite constellations (e.g., Starlink) are becoming a necessary component of future Internet. There have been increasing studies on LEO satellite networking. It is a crucial problem how to evaluate these studies in a systematic and reproducible manner. In this paper, we present OpenSN, i.e., an open source library for emulating large-scale satellite network (SN). Different from Mininet-based SN emulators (e.g., LeoEM), OpenSN adopts container-based virtualization, thus allows for running distributed routing software on each node, and can achieve horizontal scalability via flexible multi-machine extension. Compared to other container-based SN emulators (e.g., StarryNet), OpenSN streamlines the interaction with Docker command line interface and significantly reduces unnecessary operations of creating virtual links. These modifications improve emulation efficiency…
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