NCTUns 6.0 Network Simulator and Emulator
Related
papers:
S.Y. Wang, H.Y. Chen, and S.W.
Chuang, “NCTUns Tool for IEEE 802.16j Mobile WiMAX
Relay Network Simulations,” a chapter of the “Recent Developments in Mobile
Networks Research” book, (to be published by
Nova Science Publishers in 2010)
S.Y. Wang and C.L. Chou, “NCTUns Tool for Wireless
Vehicular Communication Network Researches,” Simulation
Modelling Practice and Theory, Vol. 17, No. 7, pp. 1211-1226, August 2009.
S.Y.
Wang and R.M. Huang, “NCTUns Tool for Innovative Network
Emulations,” a chapter of the “Computer-Aided Design and Other
Computing Research Developments” book, (ISBN: 978-1-60456-860-8, published by Nova Science Publishers in
2009)
S.Y.
Wang, C.C. Lin, and C.C. Huang, “NCTUns
Tool for Evaluating the Performances of Real-life P2P Applications,” a
chapter of the “Peer-to-Peer Networks,
Security, Protocols, and Applications” book, (to be published by Nova
Science Publishers in 2009)
S.Y. Wang and C.C. Lin, "NCTUns
5.0: A Network Simulator for IEEE 802.11(p) and 1609 Wireless Vehicular Network
Researches," 2nd IEEE International Symposium on Wireless Vehicular
Communications, September 21–22, 2008, Calgary, Canada. (demo paper)
S.Y. Wang and C.L. Chou, "NCTUns Simulator for Wireless Vehicular Ad Hoc Network Research", a chapter of the "Ad Hoc Networks: New Research" book (Nova Science Publishers, ISBN: 978-1-60456-895-0)
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
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
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,
Web site:
Enter the NCTUns web site
here. The NCTUns 6.0 package, its GUI user manual, its protocol developer
manual, and its 83 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
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. Nowadays, many IEEE papers that use “NCTUns”
are collected in IEEE Xplore digital library and cannot be accessed by Google.
To see these papers, enter IEEE Xplore and use “NCTUns” as the keyword to
search the full text of papers.
Academic Honors:
1. The NCTUns 5.0 is invited by MDM 2009 conference (International
Conference on Mobile Data Management – System, Services, and Middleware) to
demonstrate its simulation capabilities of IEEE 802.11(p)/1609 WAVE wireless
vehicular networks on May 18-20, 2009, Taipei, Taiwan.
2. The NCTUns 5.0 is invited by IEEE WiVEC 2008 conference to
demonstrate its simulation capabilities of IEEE 802.11(p)/1609 WAVE wireless
vehicular networks on September 21-22, 2008, Calgary, Canada.
3. 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.
4. NCTUns 4.0 is exhibited at IEEE ICC
2007 conference (International Conference on Communication 2007), June
24-28, 2007,
5. 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.
6. 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),
7. 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
8. NCTUns
2.0 was selected as research demo by IEEE INFOCOM’05 conference held in
9. 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.
10. IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, Taipei Chapter, selected NCTUns
2.0 as a full-day tutorial at its “Wireless Systems and Network Technologies”
workshop,
11. 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
12. NCTUns 1.0 was selected as a research
demo by ACM MobiCom’03 held in
13. NCTUns 1.0 was reported in the “Software Tools for Networking”
column of the IEEE Network Magazine in its July 2003 issue.
14. 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
15. NCTUns 1.0 was selected as a research demo by ACM MobiCom’02 held
in
Commercial Customers:
1.
HITACHI SAS Europe purchased a license for
their commercial uses of NCTUns in their wireless vehicular networks projects.
2.
The Identification and Security Technology
Center of Industry Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Taiwan purchased a
license for their commercial uses of NCTUns in their video surveillance
project.
3.
NEC Europe Ltd. purchased a license for
their commercial uses of NCTUns in their inter-vehicle communication projects.
4.
The Information and Communication Research
Laboratories of Industry Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Taiwan purchased
a license for their commercial uses of NCTUns in their 4G+ wireless networks
project.
5.
The Land and
Joint Division of the THALES
group in Colombes France purchased a license for their commercial uses of
NCTUns in their military-related projects.
6.
Australian
transformation and Innovation center (ATiC) run by ADI and THALES group purchased a
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
After obtaining his
Ph.D. degree from
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 distributed
emulation of a large network over multiple machines. When the emulated network has many nodes,
many real-world applications need to run on these nodes, many real-world
devices need to connect to the emulated network, or the amount of real-world
packets exchanged among real-world devices over the emulated network is large, a
single machine may not have enough CPU power and main memory to run the
emulation in real time. In such a condition, NCTUns can partition the emulated
network into several smaller parts and let each part be emulated by a NCTUns
machine. The usage of a distributed emulation is totally automatic and the user
won’t notice that the emulation is carried out over multiple machines.
·
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), multi-interface mobile nodes for heterogeneous wireless networks,
IEEE 802.16(e) mobile WiMAX networks, IEEE 802.11(p)/1609 WAVE wireless vehicular
networks, various realistic wireless channel models, IEEE 802.16(j) transparent
mode and non-transparent mode WiMAX 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)(e)( j) 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, BitTorrent, 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 and the protocol developer manual provide detailed information
about how to use NCTUns. The NCTUns package provides 83 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 functions, speed, and capabilities.
At NCTU, Prof. S.Y.
Wang 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,
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,
[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: January 12, 2010