{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T03:29:33Z","timestamp":1760239773299,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":26,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"12","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,12,21]],"date-time":"2020-12-21T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1608508800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"European Regional Development Fund (FEDER)","award":["Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Programme (COMPETE 2020) of the Portugal 2020 framework"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Programme (COMPETE 2020) of the Portugal 2020 framework"]}]},{"name":"Public and National Financial Support (FCT)(OE)","award":["MobiWise (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016426)"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["MobiWise (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016426)"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Future Internet"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The development of protocols for mobile networks, especially for vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs), presents great challenges in terms of testing in real conditions. Using a production network for testing communication protocols may not be feasible, and the use of small networks does not meet the requirements for mobility and scale found in real networks. The alternative is to use simulators and emulators, but vehicular network simulators do not meet all the requirements for effective testing. Aspects closely linked to the behaviour of the network nodes (mobility, radio communication capabilities, etc.) are particularly important in mobile networks, where a delay tolerance capability is desired. This paper proposes a distributed emulator, EmuCD, where each network node is built in a container that consumes a data trace that defines the node\u2019s mobility and connectivity in a real network (but also allowing the use of data from simulated networks). The emulated nodes interact directly with the container\u2019s operating system, updating the network conditions at each step of the emulation. In this way, our emulator allows the development and testing of protocols, without any relation to the emulator, whose code is directly portable to any hardware without requiring changes or customizations. Using the facilities of our emulator, we tested InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), Sprinkler and BitTorrent content dissemination protocols with real mobility and connectivity data from a real vehicular network. The tests with a real VANET and with the emulator have shown that, under similar conditions, EmuCD performs closely to the real VANET, only lacking in the finer details that are extremely hard to emulate, such as varying loads in the hardware.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/fi12120234","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,12,21]],"date-time":"2020-12-21T04:12:01Z","timestamp":1608523921000},"page":"234","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["EmuCD: An Emulator for Content Dissemination Protocols in Vehicular Networks"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"12","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9026-3984","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ricardo","family":"Chaves","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Instituto de Telecomunica\u00e7\u00f5es, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal"},{"name":"Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics (DETI), University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6791-4291","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Carlos","family":"Senna","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Instituto de Telecomunica\u00e7\u00f5es, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3488-2462","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Miguel","family":"Lu\u00eds","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Instituto de Telecomunica\u00e7\u00f5es, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal"},{"name":"ISEL-Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa, 1959-007 Lisboa, Portugal"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8761-8281","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Susana","family":"Sargento","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Instituto de Telecomunica\u00e7\u00f5es, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal"},{"name":"Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics (DETI), University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Andr\u00e9","family":"Moreira","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Veniam, 4000-098 Porto, Portugal"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Diogo","family":"Recharte","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Veniam, 4000-098 Porto, Portugal"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Ricardo","family":"Matos","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Veniam, 4000-098 Porto, Portugal"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,12,21]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Conde, J., Senna, C., and Sargento, S. 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