Realistic underlays for overlay simulation

Overlay networks have become an enabler for innovation in today’s Internet through cost-efficient and flexible deployment of novel services. The self-organization and scalability properties that peer-to-peer-based overlay networks provide have created real-world large-scale systems like Kad, or Amazon’s Dynamo. Building upon the OMNeT++ simulation environment, the OverSim framework provides widely used simulation of a large and growing set of overlay networks. Realistic environments for evaluation of such networks are crucial to obtain meaningful results, yet complex to develop and validate. The ReaSE topology and traffic generator allows to create Internet-like network topologies, background traffic, and attack traffic. In this work we integrate ReaSE with OverSim, therewith allowing for evaluation of overlay protocols upon realistic underlays and realistic background traffic. This integration provides an important step for design and evaluation of overlay-based systems and allows for meaningful results. We provide insights into runtime and memory consumptions of overlay simulations on the new ReaSE-based underlay on the one hand, and show effects on overlay protocols caused by the realistic underlay on the other hand.