Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Network (VDTN) is a new disruptive network architecture where vehicles act as the communication infrastructure. VDTN follows a layered architecture based on control and data planes separation, and positioning the bundle layer under the network layer. VDTN furnishes low-cost asynchronous communications coping with intermittent and sparse connectivity, variable delays and even no end-to-end connection. This paper presents a VDTN prototype (testbed) proposal, which implements and validates the VDTN layered architecture considering the proposed out-of-band signaling. The main goals of the prototype are emulation, demonstration, performance evaluation, and diagnose of protocol stacks and services, proving the applicability of VDTNs over a wide range of environments.Part of this work has been supported by the Instituto de Telecomunicações, Next Generation Networks and Applications Group (NetGNA), Covilhã Delegation, Portugal in the framework of the VDTN@Lab Project, and by the Euro-NF Network of Excellence from the Seventh Framework Programme of EU
