The rapid growth of Internet paths in heterogeneity, scale, and dynamics has made existing emulators increasingly insufficient in flexibility, scalability, and usability. To address these limitations, we present Rattan, an extensible and scalable software network path emulator for modern Internet conditions. Rattan's core innovation lies in its cell-based architecture: by splitting emulation functions into modular "cells" with well-documented asynchronous interfaces, users are allowed to easily compose different cells by hierarchically linking them and easily construct new cells by using standard cell interfaces. This design enables: (1) scalability, supporting hundreds of concurrent gigabit-level paths on a single machine and cluster-level experiments composed of multiple machines; (2) extensibility, simulating new network conditions by constructing new cells. Rattan empowers developers and researchers to efficiently and confidently evaluate, validate, and diagnose diverse network transport innovations for online services.
@article{arxiv.2507.08134,
title = {Rattan: An Extensible and Scalable Modular Internet Path Emulator},
author = {Minhu Wang and Yixin Shen and Bo Wang and Haixuan Tong and Yutong Xie and Yixuan Gao and Yan Liu and Li Chen and Mingwei Xu and Jianping Wu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.08134},
year = {2025}
}