The NorNet testbed (https://www.nntb.no) is an Internet testbed platform for research on multi-homed systems. The particular property of multi-homed systems is to be connected to multiple Internet Service Providers (ISP) simultaneously. Its initial purpose is of course to still provide connectivity in case of ISP/network failures. But does it really work that well, also with current protocols and applications? And redundancy does not come for free. A user connected to multiple ISPs will also receive multiple Internet bills each month. So, is there a possibility to make further use of multi-homing in the usual case where nothing goes wrong? Obviously, there are a lot of interesting research questions, which need to be examined in realistic Internet setups! Therefore, we are building up the NorNet open Internet testbed platform as a Linux- and Open-Source-software-based infrastructure, which currently spreads over multiple sites in different countries.

NorNet makes extensive use of advanced Linux features like Kernel-based Virtualisation (KVM), Linux Containers (LXC), BTRFS file system features, IP routing rules, Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), Multi-Path TCP (MPTCP), and many more. The goal of this talk is therefore to present an overview of the testbed, its underlying Linux features, and how they are combined to provide the multi-homing features to the various testbed users. This particularly includes an overview of how to make use of multi-path transport with MPTCP – based on the Linux MPTCP implementation – in multi-homed environments. The idea is to provide guidelines for also utilising multi-homing features in own projects.

The SimulaMet OpenAirInterface VNF provides an OpenAirInterface-based Enhanced Packet Core (EPC), with separate VDUs for HSS, MME, SPGW-C and SPGW-U. To allow for advanced in-band telemetry, we have extended this VNF to add switches with Programming Protocol-independent Packet Processors (P4) to all relevant virtual links inside the EPC. P4 allows full programability of the packet forwarding behaviour, and especially allows to extend packets with additional information for in-band telemetry. This information can be read by other P4 instances to allow for fine-granular performance data collection. In this presentation and live demonstration, we would like show the solutions chosen to efficiently use OSM for handling our extended EPC, and in particular we would like to highlight the possibilities to perform P4-based in-band telemetry to evaluate the performance of the mobile network. Finally, we would also like to show the audience a live demo of our testbed setup with telemetry collection.

Setting up 4G/5G testbeds can be a highly complicated and error-prone task. In this presentation, we introduce our Open Source VNF and tool-chain for an OpenAirInterface-based EPC to be deployed with the OSM framework. Using our VNF and tool-chain as basis, it will be easily possible to create own testbeds, customise them and extend them with further functionalities.