Emulating LTSP Clients with Mininet and QEMU: Enabling Scalable Testing for Educational Deployments

Thin-thick client computing offers significant benefits for public schools, including reduced hardware costs, simplified management, and enhanced security. However, real-world deployments of thin clients require careful planning and testing. This research proposes a novel Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) client emulation framework using Mininet and Quick Emulator (QEMU). The framework uses the integration of Mininet switches with QEMU virtual machine to emulate LTSP clients and their server. It may be used by departments of education to test various thin client deployment scenarios and applications within a controlled, virtualized environment. This paper outlines the emulation framework architecture and implementation along with its evaluations and future work.