Real-time IP network simulation at gigabit data rates
M. Zee, Miljenko Mikuc · 2003
In most of the network research or development projects, as well as in teaching / academia, network simulators today play an important role. Network simulation tools can be generally classified as those performing simulations off-line in form of batch-type tasks, and those operating in real-time, often with the ability to interact with the real network hardware and traffic. However, limited performance remains one of the main issues associated with most of the current real-time simulator implementations. In this article we present a novel framework for constructing high performance real-time IP network simulators, capable of operating at gigabit speeds using a commodity industry-standard PC hardware. Our implementation, based on a modified 4.4BSD operating system (OS) kernel, permits complex simulated network configurations to be constructed using basic building components: virtual nodes and links. Each virtual node can act as an entirely independent but completely functional OS image, allowing standard unmodified UNIX services and utilities to be used in the experiments, while retaining nearly the same performance properties as in the original OS.