NAN tools: An Open-Source Tool Suite for Interoperable Neutral Access Networks

Although IP traffic has been growing exponentially for years and it is expected to keep following the same rate in the near future, current business models do not allow operators to benefit from traffic growth and they fail in motivating investments in next generation networks. In the absence of sufficient investments, operators are induced to avoid congestion by means of traffic management strategies which raise neutrality issues. In spite of the heated debate on net neutrality, all the players involved in the Internet value chain agree in saying that new models are required to overcome broadband stagnation and support innovation. Neutral access networks (NANs) have been recently proposed as means for enabling the development of the Internet without threatening network neutrality. Although the NAN model has been implemented and tested for several years in the Urbino Wireless Campus test-bed, its actual applicability requires the availability of a tool suite flexible enough to adapt to different situations and to enable inter-operation among networks managed by different entities. This paper presents the NAN tools, an opensource tool suite which enables the employment of scalable and inter-operable NANs on top of Linux. The NAN tools have been successfully ported on embedded systems based on OpenWrt and tested on low-cost MikroTik RouterBOARD.