Technical Contribution: TheaterQ – A Qdisc for Emulation of Dynamic Satellite Networks
From June 29 to July 3, 2026, the 12th IEEE International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft) took place in Berlin. The five-day conference program was held under the theme “Autonomous and Reliable Softwarized Networks in the Age of Distributed Intelligence,” which was reflected in the inspiring keynote talks as well as numerous contributions covering topics such as edge computing, AI in 5G/6G, and autonomous networks. In addition to many international participants, the conference was visited by many researchers from German universities, making this year’s NetSoft an excellent opportunity for scientific exchange and providing an overview of current national research activities in the field of communication systems.
The conference program also included workshops and tutorials for different topics. At the Workshop on Software Defined Space Infrastructures (SDSI 2026), our research associate Martin Ottens presented the emulation framework TheaterQ, which enables the emulation of network paths in satellite networks with dynamic characteristics through a Linux kernel module.
This framework allows real software and protocol implementations to be tested over emulated satellite networks in a reproducible way.
In addition to the scientific presentations, the workshop provided an excellent opportunity for in-depth discussions with fellow researchers on simulation and emulation approaches as well as current research trends in satellite communications.