The Interplanetary Internet implemented on a terrestrial testbed

Delay is an important factor in space communication and its nature is completely different from terrestrial delay environments. Moreover, space deployments and testing in space environments are very costly and time consuming. We propose a design of the IPN and implement it with the Interplanetary Overlay Network (ION) software module on physical nodes on the terrestrial ORBIT testbed. Two space network scenarios are designed and experimentally evaluated to verify the correctness of the network implementation. We also focus on the study of bundle transmission delay and separately evaluate the effect of bundle size and number of bundles. The experimental evaluation provides insights into the factors which caused delay in bundle transmission such as custody refusal, expiration of bundle lifetime and congestion.