Ygarapé: Emulated Transport Networks for 5G Testbeds using Mininet in Kubernetes

Fifth Generation (5G) Networks research requires high-fidelity testbeds that balance the scalability of emulation with the realism of bare-metal setups. This paper introduces Ygarapé, a cloud-native architecture solution for transport network emulation that integrates Mininet into Kubernetes. Using an automated interface-hijacking and a Representational State Transfer (REST) API for real-time control, Ygarapé enables containerized 5G Network Functions (NFs) to interact via programmable emulated topologies. Experimental evaluations featuring Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) for Cloud Gaming and Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) for Video Streaming traffics show that Ygarapé accurately captures application-level performance degradation under transport stress. Results demonstrate that a 100 ms link delay triggers immediate FPS drops and latency spikes, which are autonomously mitigated by the platform's control plane via Service Level Agreement (SLA) enforcement and path re-provisioning. The result is a a flexible, low-cost platform ideal for validating closed-loop automation in 5G environments.