METhoD: A Framework for the Emulation of a Delay-Tolerant Network Scenario for Media Content Distribution in Under-Served Regions

Wireless communication is a cost-effective method of providing access to information for users in developing economies. We are interested in delay-tolerant networking (DTN) for distributing multimedia content to micro-entrepreneurs in under-served rural areas of SouthAfrica. Buses equipped with WLAN-enabled devices (infostations), providing DTN connectivity, will be used to ferry data between urban and rural areas. Before the actual deployment, rigorous experiments must be performed to study the performance of the proposed network design. Such an activity is time-consuming and requires complex preparation. Simulators, while convenient, do not provide the most realistic results. Given the complexity of DTN testing, we try to find a middle-ground approach by building a mobility emulator test-bed, which we use to emulate the network scenario. In this chapter, we outline the design and implementation details of the network emulator. We then describe the experiments that were performed to study the impact of different network dynamics on content delivery and their results. The results from the experiments are used to improve our current network design.