Comparison of Network

simulator

Sarra Naoui
 NS3
NS3 (Network Simulator) is an open source, discrete event network simulator.
It is used for the simulation of network protocols with different network topologies.

Advantages
Support simulation for TCP, UDP, ICMP, IPv4, multicast routing, P2P and CSMA protocols
Wide range of use in both optimization and expansion of the existing networks.

Limitations
Active maintainers are required to respond to the user questions and bug reports, and to help test and
validate the system.
NS3 still suffers from lack of credibility.
It cannot handle problems of the bandwidth properly
It can simulate 400 nodes properly but more than 400 nodes create problem and realistic results cannot be obtained.
 TOSSIM
TOSSIM is an extension for TinyOSMote Simulator that provide simple and powerful emulator for Wireless
Sensor Network (WSN).
It provides several mechanisms for in-teracting with the network; monitoring packet traffic,statically or dynamically
injecting packet into the net-work and invocation of TinyOS call.

Advantages

It supports thousand of Nodes.

As TOSSIM is Open Source, every online document is free of cost.

Limitations
It is specially designed for TinyOS, not for simula-tion performance metrics of other new protocols.
It is specially designed for TinyOS, not for simula-tion performance metrics of other new protocols.
In the simulation process, every node has to run on NesC code, thats why TOSSIM can only emulate the type of
homogeneous applications
 OMNeT++
OMNeT++ (Objective Modular Network Tested in C++) is an open source, extensible, modular, compo-nent-based
discrete event simulator tool like NS-2 andNS-3 to simulate networks both wired and wireless.
It is mostly used in research and educational purposes and in the global scientific community.

Advantages

Provides a powerful GUI environment.

Tracing and debugging are much easier than other simulator.
It can provide fully support to MAC and some localized protocols in Wireless sensor networks.
Simulates channel controls and power consumptions.

Limitations

It has limited capacity for available protocols.

Poor analysis and management of typical performance.
The mobility extension is relatively incomplete.
 GloMoSiM
GloMoSim ( Global Mobile Information System Simulator) is a parallel discrete event simulation software that
simulates wireless and wired network systems.
It used for large scale wireless networks

Advantages

GloMoSim Provides modular simulation for protocol stack.

It is capable of scaling up to networks with thou-sands of heterogeneous nodes.
Parallel model execution is provided to users in transparent manner.
It is free for education and research.

Limitations
The documentation of GloMoSim is quite poor.
No specific routing protocols for sensor network,
No energy consumption models for transport layer and IP address support.
 DRMSiM
DRMSim (Dynamic Routing Model Simulator) is a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) software that aims at the
evaluation of routing models at a large scale
The main goal of DRMsim is to quantitatively evaluate the main performance metrics of routing schemes especially,
the metrics related to the scalability and dynamic properties of these schemes

Advantages
DRMsim is dedicated for a routing model simulation.
It provides efficient graph structures and algorithms.
It has capability to import external topologies (e.g.,CAIDA maps).
It is a 100% pure Java application which makes it executable on most platforms.
It is free of cost for research purposes

Limitations
By using DRMSim only the routing protocol can be simulated.
It does not make use of parallel/distributed discrete event simulation techniques. It optionally relies on distribution
for the parallel execution of simulation batches.
 SSFNet
SSFNet (Scalable Simulation Framework Network Models) is a discrete event network simulator for network lab
experimentation and research.
It allows for multiple processor machines to simulate a network using multiple processors that increase performance
significantly.
Advantages

Scalable high performance Java simulation platform.

Provides simple, standardized syntax for high-level model description DML.3.
Allow Management of global traffic patterns.
Support high performance network simulation.

Limitations
Its slow convergence may occur in presence of long-range correlated traffic.
Understanding of scaling conditions: some emergent phenomena can be seen in sufficiently large networks,
with sufficiently many traffic flows.
Need to understand relations between different abstraction levels.
Need to predict internet behavior under alternative-futures scenarios
 Comparison of simulators based on
general Information(1/2)

Name License Language Supporte GUI Document

Type d Support Available
Operating
System
NS3 Open Source C++ and GNU/Linux, Yes Excellent
Optional Python FreeBSD, Mac
Bindings OS X, Windows
XP, Windows
Vista& Windows
7

TOSSIM Open Source Python, C++ and Linux Operating Yes Good
NesC Systems or on
Cygwin on
Windows

OMNeT++ Open source (for C++ Windows XP or Yes Good

study and research Later, Linux, Mac
purposes), OS X, and other
Commercial ( for Unix-like System.
industrial
purposes)
 Comparison of simulators based on
general Information (2/2)

Name License Language Supporte GUI Document

Type d Support Available
Operating
System
GloMoSIM Open Source C Windows, Linux, Limited Poor
Sun SPARC
Solaris

DRMSim Open source Java UNIX, Linux Yes Good

(Ubuntu, Fedora,
CentOS), Mac OS

SSFNet Open source Java and C++ Linux, Solaris, Yes Good
and Windows NT
using JDK1.2 and
higher
 Comparison of simulators based on
The properties of simulators (1/2)
Name Simulatio Available Scalability Number Comment
n Event Module of Node
Type support
NS3 Discret event Wired, Wireless, Limited ------ Targeted primarily
Adhoc and for research and
Wireless Sensor educational use
Networks and its
performance is
stable

TOSSIM Bit level Discrete TinOS based Enough 850 Provide simple
event wireless sensor and powerful
network emulator for
emulation wireless sensor
Network

OMNeT++ Discrete event Wired, Wireless, Enough ------- It provides an

Adhoc and extensible and
Wireless Sensor component based
Networks analyzation and
discrete event
powerful
simulation in
academic and
research.
 Comparison of simulators based on
The properties of simulators (2/2)
Name Simulatio Available Scalability Number Comment
n Event Module of Node
Type support
GloMoSIM Discrete event Wired, Wireless, Large Up to 10.000 It provides
Adhoc and modular
Wireless Sensor simulation for
Networks protocol stack and
free for academic
research but not
updated regularly.

DRMSim Discrete Event Dynamic route Large Up to 10,000 It enables the fast
model simulation simulation of
routing shemes on
large scale
dynamic networks

SSFNet Discrete Event Modeling and Very Large Up to 100,000 Unique to

simulation of enhance the
Internet protocols modeling
and networks scalability, traffic
patterns,
bandwidth etc
Merci pour votre attention