NCTUns 4.0 Network Simulator and Emulator

 

NCTUns4

 

Related papers:

 

S.Y. Wang and C.L. Chou, "NCTUns Simulator for Wireless Vehicular Ad Hoc Network Research", to appear in the "Ad Hoc Networks: New Research" book (to be published by Nova Science Pubishers in 2008)

 

S.M. Huang, Y.C. Sung, S.Y. Wang, and Y.B. Lin, “NCTUns Simulation Tool for WiMAX Modeling,” Third Annual International Wireless Internet Conference, October 22 – 24, 2007, Austin, Texas, USA. (EI and ISI indexed, sponsored by ICST, ACM, EURASIP)

 

S.Y. Wang, C.L. Chou, Y.H. Chiu, Y.S. Tseng, M.S. Hsu, Y.W. Cheng, W.L. Liu, and T.W. Ho, “NCTUns 4.0: An Integrated Simulation Platform for Vehicular Traffic, Communication, and Network Researches,” 1st IEEE International Symposium on Wireless Vehicular Communications, September 30 – October 1, 2007, Baltimore, MD, USA

 

S.Y. Wang, C.L. Chou, C.C. Lin, “The Design and Implementation of the NCTUns Network Simulation Engine”, Elsevier Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory, 15 (2007) 57 – 81.

 

S.Y. Wang and K.C. Liao, “Innovative Network Emulations using the NCTUns Tool”, as a book chapter of the “Computer Networking and Networks” book, (ISBN 1-59454-830-7, published by Nova Science Publishers in 2006)

 

S.Y. Wang and Y.B. Lin, “NCTUns Network Simulation and Emulation for Wireless Resource Management”, Wiley Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, Vol.5, Issue 8, December 2005, pp. 899–916.

 

S.Y. Wang, C.L. Chou, C.H. Huang, C.C. Hwang, Z.M. Yang, C.C. Chiou, and C.C. Lin, "The Design and Implementation of the NCTUns 1.0 Network Simulator", Computer Networks, Vol. 42, Issue 2, June 2003, pp. 175-197.

 

S.Y. Wang, “NCTUns 1.0”, in the column “Software Tools for Networking”, IEEE Networks, Vol. 17, No. 4, July 2003.

 

S.Y. Wang and H.T. Kung, "A New Methodology for Easily Constructing Extensible and High-Fidelity TCP/IP Network Simulators", Computer Networks, Vol. 40, Issue 2, October 2002, pp. 257-278.

 

S.Y. Wang and H.T. Kung, "A Simple Methodology for Constructing Extensible and High-Fidelity TCP/IP Network Simulators", IEEE INFOCOM'99, March 21-25, 1999, New York, USA.

 

Web site:

 

Enter the NCTUns web site here. The NCTUns 4.0 package, its GUI user manual, its protocol developer manual, and its 66 demo video clips are stored inside. The nctuns mailing list can be accessed here at http://nsl10.csie.nctu.edu.tw/pipermail/nctuns. The NCTUns forum can be accessed here at http://nsl10.csie.nctu.edu.tw/phpBB.

 

Download Statistics:

The NCTUns network simulator and emulator was first released on 11/18/2002. As of April 29, 2008, according to the download user database, more than 11,383 people from 128 countries have registered at the NCTUns web site and downloaded it. (A distribution of the nationality of registered users worldwide is available here. A distribution of the universities of registered users in Taiwan is available here.)

 

Usage References:

To see how people in the world are using NCTUns for their researches, you may search the “NCTUns” keyword in Google. To see the impact of NCTUns, you may search the “network simulator” keyword in Google. You can also see the usage references collected so far.

 

Academic Honors:

1.       The NCTUns 4.0 workshop was held on July 16-17, 2007. It attracted 195 professors, students, engineers, and researchers coming from 44 universities in Taiwan.

2.       NCTUns 4.0 is exhibited at IEEE ICC 2007 conference (International Conference on Communication 2007), June 24-28, 2007, Glasgow, Scotland, UK. See the features of NCTUns 4.0 here.

3.       NCTUns 4.0 Beta is selected as a research exhibition by IEEE PIMRC 2006 conference (The 17th IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications), Helsinki, Finland, September 11-14 2006.

4.       NCTUns 3.0 was selected as a research demo by IEEE/Create-Net TridentCom 2006 conference (Conference on Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks and Communities), Barcelona, Spain, March 1-3 2006.

5.       NCTUns 2.0 was selected as a half-day tutorial by SPECT 2005 conference (2005 International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, sponsored by The Society for Modeling and Simulation International), held in Philadelphia, USA, July 24-28, 2005.

6.       NCTUns 2.0 was selected as research demo by IEEE INFOCOM’05 conference held in Miami, USA, March 13-17, 2005.

7.       NCTUns 2.0 was selected as a half-day tutorial by MASCOTS 2004 conference (12th Annual Meeting of the IEEE / ACM International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems), Volendam, The Netherlands, October 4 –7, 2004.

8.       IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, Taipei Chapter, selected NCTUns 2.0 as a full-day tutorial at its “Wireless Systems and Network Technologies” workshop, Taipei, Taiwan, September 1 –3, 2004.

9.       The second NCTUns 1.0 workshop was held on December 12, 2003. It attracted 120 professors, students, engineers, and researchers coming from 28 universities in Taiwan.

10.    NCTUns 1.0 was selected as a research demo by ACM MobiCom’03 held in San Deigo, USA, September 14-19, 2003.

11.    NCTUns 1.0 was reported in the “Software Tools for Networking” column of the IEEE Network Magazine in its July 2003 issue.

12.    The first NCTUns 1.0 workshop was held on December 8, 2002. It attracted 220 professors, students, engineers, and researchers coming from 26 universities in Taiwan.

13.    NCTUns 1.0 was selected as a research demo by ACM MobiCom’02 held in Atlanta, USA, September 23-28, 2002.

 

Commercial Customers:

1.       The Identification and Security Technology Center of Industry Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Taiwan purchased a software license for their commercial uses of NCTUns in their video surveillance project.

2.       NEC Europe Ltd. purchased a software license for their commercial uses of NCTUns in their inter-vehicle communication projects.

3.       The Information and Communication Research Laboratories of Industry Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Taiwan purchased a software license for their commercial uses of NCTUns in their 4G+ wireless networks project.

4.       The Land and Joint Division of the THALES group in Colombes France purchased a software license for their commercial uses of NCTUns in their military-related projects.

5.       Australian transformation and Innovation center (ATiC) run by ADI and THALES group purchased a software license for their commercial uses of NCTUns in their military-related projects.

 

Introduction:

The NCTUns is a high-fidelity and extensible network simulator and emulator capable of simulating various protocols used in both wired and wireless IP networks. Its core technology is based on the novel kernel re-entering methodology invented by Prof. S.Y. Wang [1, 2] when he was pursuing his Ph.D. degree at Harvard University. Due to this novel methodology, NCTUns provides many unique advantages that cannot be easily achieved by traditional network simulators such as ns-2 [3] and OPNET [4].

After obtaining his Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in September 1999, Prof. S.Y. Wang returned to Taiwan and became an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), Taiwan, where he founded his “Network and System Laboratory.” Since that time, Prof. S.Y. Wang has been leading and working with his students to design and implement NCTUns (the NCTU Network Simulator) for more than seven years. 

The NCTUns network simulator and emulator has many useful features listed below:

·         It can be easily used as an emulator. An external host in the real world can exchange packets (e.g., set up a TCP connection) with nodes (e.g., host, router, or mobile station) in a network simulated by NCTUns. Two external hosts in the real world can also exchange their packets via a network simulated by NCTUns. This feature is very useful as the function and performance of real-world devices can be tested under various simulated network conditions.

·         It supports seamless integration of emulation and simulation. A complicated network simulated by NCTUns can be seamlessly integrated with a real-life network. Real-life network traffic can pass through a complicated simulated network and interact with simulated network traffic.

·         It directly uses the real-life Linux TCP/IP protocol stack to generate high-fidelity simulation results. By using a novel kernel re-entering simulation methodology, a real-life Linux kernel’s protocol stack is directly used to generate high-fidelity simulation results.

·         It can run any real-life UNIX application program on a simulated node without any modification. Any real-life program (e.g., P2P BitTorrent or Java programs) can be run on a simulated host, router, mobile node, etc. to generate realistic network traffic. This capability also enables a researcher to evaluate the functionality and performance of a distributed application or system under various network conditions. Another important advantage of this feature is that application programs developed during simulation studies can be directly deployed and run on real-world UNIX machines after simulation studies are finished. This eliminates the time and effort required to port a simulation prototype to a real-world implementation if traditional network simulators were used.

·         It can use any real-life UNIX network configuration and monitoring tools. For example, the UNIX route, ifconfig, netstat, tcpdump, traceroute commands can be run on a simulated network to configure or monitor the simulated network.

·         Its setup and usage of a simulated network and application programs are exactly the same as those used in real-life IP networks. For example, each layer-3 interface has an IP address automatically assigned to it by the GUI and application programs directly use these IP addresses to communicate with each other. For this reason, any person who is familiar with real-life IP networks will easily learn and operate NCTUns in just a few minutes. For the same reason, NCTUns can be used as an educational tool to teach students how to configure and operate a real-life network. 

·         It simulates various important networks. The supported networks include Ethernet-based fixed Internet, IEEE 802.11(b) wireless LANs, mobile ad hoc (sensor) networks, GPRS cellular networks, optical networks (including both circuit-switching and busrt-switching networks), IEEE 802.11(b) dual-radio wireless mesh networks, IEEE 802.11(e) QoS wireless LANs, Tactical and active mobile ad hoc networks, 3dB beamwidth 60-degree and 90-degree steerable and directional antennas, IEEE 802.16(d) WiMAX wireless networks (including the PMP and mesh modes), DVB-RCS satellite networks, wireless vehicular networks for Intelligent Transportation Systems (including V2V and V2I), and multi-interface mobile nodes for heterogeneous wireless networks, etc. 

·         It simulates various important protocols. For example, IEEE 802.3 CSMA/CD MAC, IEEE 802.11 (b) CSMA/CA MAC, IEEE 802.11(e) QoS MAC, IEEE 802.11(b) wireless mesh network routing protocol, IEEE 802.16(d) WiMAX wireless MAC and PHY, DVB-RCS satellite MAC and PHY, learning bridge protocol, spanning tree protocol, IP, Mobile IP, Diffserv (QoS), RIP, OSPF, UDP, TCP, RTP/RTCP/SDP, HTTP, FTP, Telnet, etc.

·         It finishes a network simulation case quickly. By combining the kernel re-entering methodology with the discrete-event simulation methodology, a simulation job can be finished quickly.

·         It generates repeatable simulation results. If the user fixes the random number seed for a simulation case, the simulation results of a case are the same across different simulation runs even if there are some other activities (e.g., disk I/O) occurring on the simulation machine.

·         It provides a highly-integrated and professional GUI environment. This GUI can help a user to quickly (1) draw network topologies, (2) configure the protocol modules used inside a node, (3) specify the moving paths of mobile nodes, (4) plot network performance graphs, (5) play back the animation of a logged packet transfer trace, etc. All of these operations can be easily, intuitively, and quickly done with the GUI.

·         Its simulation engine adopts an open-system architecture and is open source. By using a set of module APIs provided by the simulation engine, a protocol developer can easily implement his (her) protocol and integrate it into the simulation engine. NCTUns uses a simple and easy-to-understand syntax to describe the settings and configurations of a simulation job. These descriptions are generated by the GUI and stored in a suite of files. Normally the GUI will automatically transfer these files to the simulation engine for execution. However, if a researcher wants to try his (her) novel device or network configurations that the current GUI does not support, he (she) can totally bypass the GUI and generate the suite of description files by himself (herself) using any text editor (or script program). The non-GUI-generated suite of files can then be manually fed to the simulation engine for execution.    

·         It supports remote and concurrent simulations. NCTUns adopts a distributed architecture. The GUI and simulation engine are separately implemented and use the client-server model to communicate. Therefore, a remote user using the GUI program can remotely submit his (her) simulation job to a server running the simulation engine. The server will run the submitted simulation job and later return the results back to the remote GUI program for analyses. This scheme can easily support the cluster computing model in which multiple simulation jobs are performed in parallel on different server machines. This can increase the total simulation throughput.

·         It provides complete and high-quality documentations. The GUI user manual has 130 pages and the protocol developer manual has 230 pages. The NCTUns package also provides 66 example simulation cases and their demo video clips to help a user easily understand how to run up a simulation case.

·         It is continuously supported, maintained, and improved. New functions and network types are continuously added to NCTUns to enhance its function, speed, and capability. For example, IEEE 802.16(e) WiMAX wireless network will be supported in the next version.

At NCTU, Prof. S.Y. Wang (currently an Associate professor) and his students are working hard to continuously add more functionalities and features to NCTUns. They want to make it a high-quality software and would like to contribute it to the networking community.

THE NCTUNS NETWORK SIMULATOR AND EMULATOR IS AN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF THE NETWORK AND SYSTEM LABORATORY (NSL), DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE, NATIONAL CHIAO TUNG UNIVERSITY, TAIWAN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

References:

[1] S.Y. Wang and H.T. Kung, "A Simple Methodology for Constructing Extensible and High-Fidelity TCP/IP Network Simulators," IEEE INFOCOM'99, March 21-25, 1999, New York, USA

[2] S.Y. Wang and H.T. Kung, "A New Methodology for Easily Constructing Extensible and High-Fidelity TCP/IP Network Simulators," Computer Networks, Vol. 40, Issue 2, October 2002, pp. 257-278.

[3] NS-2 web site, available at http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/

[4] OPNET Inc. web site, available at http://www.opnet.com/

Last update date: April 29, 2008