Spectral Clustering Based Resource Allocation Strategy for Distributed Large-scale Network Emulation

Nowadays, networks are increasingly reliant on software frameworks and virtualization. To obtain relevant pre-dictions of the behavior of their protocols, network emulation tools play a crucial role. However, as networks grow in size and complexity, the emulation task demands more physical resources such as CPU and memory. Consequently, a single physical machine is no longer sufficient to handle large-scale network emulation. Instead, distributed network emulation tools must be employed for resource-intensive network emulation tasks. In resource-intensive distributed network emulation, the physical resource allocation is NP-hard to perform appropriately. In this paper, we propose SCBG (spectral clustering based greedy node placement algorithm) as a means to enhance the bandwidth utilization between physical nodes in distributed emulation. SCBG aims to address the communication bottleneck in distributed network simulation, surpassing the algorithm proposed by Distrinet, while also improving the algorithm's execution speed. Additionally, SCBG incorporates optimization for time dilation when physical bandwidth resources are severely insufficient. This optimization leads to a reduction in the additional time required for network simulation after applying time dilation. Experimental results demonstrate that SCBG surpasses the algorithm in Distrinet across a diverse range of intricate large-scale networks.