Building a Low-cost Network Digital Twin for the IoT-Edge-Cloud Continuum Using Open-Source Tooling
2026-06-23 • Networking and Internet Architecture
Networking and Internet Architecture
AI summaryⓘ
The authors created a low-cost, open-source digital model (called a Network Digital Twin) to mimic industrial IoT edge networks without affecting actual devices. Their system uses container technology and software-defined networking to simulate network behavior and monitor it in real time. When tested against a real edge network on a Raspberry Pi, the digital twin closely matched real-world latency and data speed measurements. Some differences in TCP speed and packet loss were observed but explained by virtualization issues, which the authors detail along with fixes.
Network Digital TwinIndustrial IoT (IIoT)ContainerlabOpen vSwitchONOSSoftware-Defined Networking (SDN)PrometheusGrafanaRound-Trip Time (RTT)Throughput
Authors
Josevany do Amaral, Rute C. Sofia
Abstract
Validating network configurations and testing failure scenarios in IoT-edge-cloud environments without disrupting live infrastructure remains an open operational challenge. This paper presents a low-cost, fully open-source Network Digital Twin (NDT) for IIoT edge deployments, built on Containerlab, Open vSwitch, ONOS, and a Prometheus+Grafana observability stack. The framework integrates container-native topology emulation, SDN-driven traffic engineering, and real-time telemetry in a single deployable artefact. Validation against a physical Raspberry Pi edge WLAN shows strong distributional convergence on RTT median (delta = 0.4 ms) and UDP throughput (delta = 0.03 Mbps). Remaining divergences on TCP throughput and packet loss are attributed to identifiable virtualisation artefacts, with root causes and remediation paths provided.