Simplifying the Emulation of WLAN Environments: Design and Implementation of a Multi-Client WLAN Traffic Emulator

Abstract

Wireless communication is becoming more popular, especially the usage of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). Although WLAN provides convenient Internet access, the IEEE 802.11 standard family that enables the wireless communication results in variety of diverse WLAN environments. The constant development of new amendments in the IEEE 802.11 standard family offers consumers many technologies for improving the WLAN environment. The constant development and improvement in data rates and multi-client WLAN environments requires a solution for running benchmark tests for WLAN environments. The requirement for creating real-world WLAN environments is necessary when benchmark testing the newly constructed WLAN environments. Therefore, emulation is the best solution because it focuses on replicating real-world scenarios with physical devices and software rather than utilizing available simulation software. Especially multi-client emulation is a great way of creating WLAN environments. There are commercial products available for multi-client emulation, which have limitations in deployability and upgradability. This thesis proposes a multi-client WLAN emulator that can be upgraded to support the latest amendments of the 802.11 standard family. To simplify the emulation of WLAN environments, a Python script is created for controlling the proposed multi-client emulator setup. The Python script creates a possibility for the multi-client emulator setup to utilize multiple connected Wireless Network Interface Cards (WNICs) for generating WLAN traffic with iPerf2 tool. The proposed multi-client emulator is developed in a way that it can manage the newest amendments of the 802.11 standard family, while also supporting all three 802.11 frequency bands. The proposed multi-client emulator setup was evaluated against data collected from physical WLAN devices. Various WLAN environments were emulated with the multi-client emulator to prove the versatility of the tool. The tests run on the multi-client emulator were compared to results gathered from real-world client devices such as mobile phones and laptops. To compare the results of the multi-client emulator to the results of the real-world devices, iPerf2 data of the multi-client emulator and real-world client devices was collected for analysis. The comparison shows that the proposed multi-client emulator can be used to emulate real-world WLAN environments, which makes it a suitable option for commercial WLAN traffic emulators.