NS Simulator for Beginners

NS-2 is an open-source discrete event network simulator which is widely used by both the research community as well as by the people involved in the standardization protocols of IETF. The goal of this book is twofold: on one hand to learn how to use the NS-2 simulator, and on the other hand, to become acquainted with and to understand the operation of some of the simulated objects using NS-2 simulations. The book is intended to help students, engineers or researchers who need not have much background in programming or who want to learn through simple examples how to analyse some simulated objects using NS-2. Simulations may differ from each other in many aspects: the applications, topologies, parameters of network objects (links, nodes) and protocols used, etc. The first chapter is a general introduction to the book, where the importance of NS-2 as a tool for a good comprehension of networks and protocols is stated. In the next chapters we present special topics as TCP, RED, etc., using NS-2 as a tool for better understanding the protocols. We provide in the appendices a review of Random Variables and Confidence Intervals, as well as a first sketch for using the new NS-3 simulator. Table of Contents: Introduction / NS-2 Simulator Preliminaries / How to work with trace files / Description and simulation of TCP/IP / Routing and network dynamics / RED: Random Early Discard / Differentiated Services / Mobile Networks and Wireless Local Area Networks / Classical queueing models / Tcl and C++ linkage

Introduction.- NS-2 Simulator Preliminaries.- How to work with trace files.- Description and simulation of TCP/IP.- Routing and network dynamics.- RED: Random Early Discard.- Differentiated Services.- Mobile Networks and Wireless Local Area Networks.- Classical queueing models.- Tcl and C++ linkage.

Eitan Altman received the B.Sc.in electrical engineering (1984), the B.A. degree in physics (1984) and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering (1990), all from the Technion-Israel Institute, Haifa. In (1990) he further received his B.Mus. degree in music composition at Tel-Aviv University. Since 1990, he has been with INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, France. His current research interests include performance evaluation and control of telecommunication networks and in particular, wireless communications and networking games. He is in the editorial board of the journals: DGAA (Dynamic Games and Applications) and JEDC, and served in the editorial board of the journals Stochastic Models, COMNET, SIAM SICON, WINET and JDEDs. He has been the general chairman and the (co)chairman of the program committee of several international conferences and workshops (on game theory, networking games and mobile networks). He is the steering committee chair of WIOPT and of NetGCoop and a Fellow member of IEEE. Tania Jimenez received her Ph.D. from University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France in 2000. She was Assistant Professor at Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela from 2000 to 2002, in the Center of Models and Simulation (CeSiMo). She is at present a research engineer at Avignon University, in the Informatics Lab (http://lia.univ-avignon.fr). Her research interests include simulation as well as optimization and control of telecommunication networks.