Development of an Architecture for a Cyber-Physical Emulation Test Range for Network Security Testing

Although a number of network emulation tools exist, they vary on the level of fidelity of the emulation. Furthermore, most of all emulate a network completely virtually, not allowing for hardware-in-the-loop as part of the emulation. This paper presents an architecture for a cyber-physical emulation test range that operates at high fidelity and allows for incorporation of hardware-in-the-loop with no customization required. The system, which is built on top of VMware, allows for emulation of any network providing that all nodes can either be virtualized or physically attached to the system. Network testing, including penetration testing, can be performed at a high level of fidelity.