A NS-3-based Cloud Wireless Network’s Emulator for Undergraduate Teaching

The COVID-19 pandemic limited the availability of in-classroom laboratory experiences with physical wireless equipment. Existing simulation tools, while adequate for performance analysis as required for research, fail to provide the real-world feeling and user interface of a physical equipment. Due to this lack of realism, they do not fulfill the educational objectives of undergraduate courses. Indeed, under a competencies-based curricula, it is expected that a student interacts with the equipment, configures it, run her experiments, evaluates the results, decides in any changes, and then implements and validates them. This paper reports our development of a cloud-based wireless network emulator that intends to give the students the same user experience as the one obtained with our testbed of (physical) Wireless Access Points running OpenWRT. We also discuss students’ experiences using our emulator on a Wireless Networking undergrad course in the second half of 2020.