Simulating networks with NS-3 and enhancing realism with DCE

Communication networks are constantly evolving with new technologies providing greater quality, resiliency, and security to the data traversing current networks. In this ever-changing field, simulation provides an avenue for examining the traffic within new or existing networks. In simulating a network, characteristics and metrics of the topology may be derived without interfering with the existing framework or incurring an immediate hardware or software cost. The popular network simulator ns-3 is an effective tool for studying these network behaviors. This talk presents an overview of ns-3, discussing its design as a discrete event network simulator and its capabilities. Code snippets will be examined, demonstrating how to configure a network topology in simulation, generate packet traffic to traverse the simulated network, visualize the network behaviors, and glean metrics from the simulation. A subproject of ns-3, Direct Code Execution (DCE), is also described, demonstrating a mechanism for deploying real-world applications within the simulation.