Providing a Graphical User Interface for ns-2 with Visual Network Simulator

Abstract

The growth of the number of hosts connected to the Internet and of new applications increased the importance of research and development of Quality of Service (QoS)-based networks. In order to optimize the proposal and the validation of new QoS architectures and technologies, simulation seems to be the best solution when considering the deployment efforts, cost and scalability. Unfortunately, the existing platforms and tools for simulating QoS-based Networks either do not support all the architectures and technologies or do not fully support their characteristics. Basically, a simulation life-cycle can be divided into three phases: specification of the scenario, simulation of the events and analysis of the results of the simulation. This paper presents a platform for the specification of networks scenarios supporting QoS and multicast, which can be simulated using ns-2. This platform provides the author with the possibility of covering all the three phases of the simulation life-cycle on-the-fly.

A grid service‐based Distributed Network Simulation Environment for computer networks education

“…Furthermore, ns-2 does not provide a GUI that integrates its use with that of the tools employed for the analysis of the results of simulations. Following [7], the lack of such a GUI also makes the task of analyzing their results cumbersome for students. This is especially true when the study of a network scenario implies that students must handle the output files generated by multiple simulations.…”

“…It is also worth mentioning the existence of a number of GUIs that integrate ns-2 with tools employed to analyze the results of single simulations with the aim of facilitating the use of ns-2 in an educational context. Examples include the Visual Network Simulator (VNS) [7] or the NS Workbench [9]. Nevertheless, these GUIs leave the problem of supporting the execution of multiple distributed simulations and the analysis of their results unsolved.…”