ECE 578 12/12/13 Lab 3 Ethernet Coax Simulation

Network Topology used for simulation 1. We have a LAN composed of 30 nodes connected via a coaxial link in a bus topology operating at 10 Mbps. The Ethernet MAC model provided with OPNET implements the carrier sensing, collision detection, and retransmission mechanisms specified in the IEEE 802.3, IEEE 8-2.3u, and IEEE 802.3z Standard. Explicit modeling is performed for all features other than serialization of bit transfers to and from the physical layer. Initially we have selected parameters that result in each node generating a packet every 200 seconds with a delay of .5 seconds. As the simulation progresses, we decrease the time between transmissions. Because these nodes implement CSCD, as traffic increases the more packet collisions occur, resulting in fewer packages being received. From the graph and corresponding table, we observe that about 2/3 of the total number of sent packets are received until simulation 4 when the ratio drops to .5. The network is able to maintain this throughput for simulation 5,but begins to experience progressively more and more collisions as the simulations progress. By the final 9th simulation the ratio is only about .1. Initially the throughput of the network is low because there simply arent a lot of packets begin sent period. Traffic Sent (packets/sec) Traffic received (packets/sec) 15.42592 10.68926 31.43263 20.68409 65.67845 43.1393 124.2403 75.37506 307.1176 154.103 600.7513 212.2655 850.1197 213.9721 1000.527 209.9608 1506.476 156.234 2. The graph comparing the number of collisions

on Node 0 shows that the smaller delay between sending packets, the larger the number of collisions. This makes sense as we changed the characteristics of all the machines in the LAN, so they are all trying to send packets at a way faster rate, resulting in more collisions. The graph comparing the received traffic shows that at the beginning, the configuration corresponding to CoaxQ2a with exponential = 0.1 has the lowest traffic received. However, as the load becomes heavier, the other network configurations begin to surpass configuration a in terms of reception speed. Configuration c initially looks quite promising, but as the load becomes its heaviest, it begins to decline in performance. From the graph it is evident that configuration b is the optimum solution..

3. The number of Coax_Q3 nodes is half of Coax_Q2c. As fewer computers are connected to the LAN Ethernet bus, fewer collisions will occur as we can see in the graph.

4. It doesnt appear that the packet size really has much of an effect on the performance of the system. They both start at approximately the same rate, but have noise spikes at different time points. That being said, Id be surprise if the smoothed data didnt nearly overlap.