This paper gives a proposition for laboratory equipment and its use for simulation of effects of network topology and link state reconfiguration during battlefield operations. All equipment presented in this paper is based on open source software solutions and well-known hardware development platforms in order to minimize equipment cost as well as provide a simulation environment that is independent of any single manufacturer. Utilization of open source solutions gives us a level of security as it lessens a chance of traditional vendor abuse in more unfortunate circumstances. The core of the laboratory is based on a GNS3 simulator, which can be installed on all three major operating systems (Linux, Windows and Mac) and has the capability of simulating a network that can be added in between two physical end devices that we wish to test in various battlefield scenarios using highly available network adapters. In addition to that, we will focus on network intermediate devices (switches and routers) that are not dependent on any single manufacturer and are open source solutions that can be used for future development of secure and fully-known equipment. We present expected results for the transition of encrypted and unencrypted traffic.