NS2 INTRODUCTION

NS (version 2) is an object-oriented, discrete event driven network simulator developed at UC Berkely written in C++ and OTcl. NS is primarily useful for simulating local and wide area networks. Although NS is fairly easy to use once you get to know the simulator, it is quite difficult for a first time user, because there are few user-friendly manuals. Even though there is a lot of documentation written by the developers which has in depth explanation of the simulator, it is written with the depth of a skilled NS user. The purpose of this project is to give a new user some basic idea of how the simultor works, how to setup simulation networks, where to look for further information about network components in simulator codes, how to create new network components, etc., mainly by giving simple examples and brief explanations based on our experiences. Although all the usage of the simulator or possible network simulation setups may not be covered in this project, the project should help a new user to get started quickly

NS is an event driven network simulator developed at UC Berkeley that simulates variety of IP networks. It implements network protocols such as TCP and UPD, traffic source behavior such as FTP, Telnet, Web, CBR and VBR, router queue management mechanism such as Drop Tail, RED and CBQ, routing algorithms such as Dijkstra, and more. NS also implements multicasting and some of the MAC layer protocols for LAN simulations. The NS project is now a part of the VINT project that develops tools for simulation results display, analysis and converters that convert network topologies generated by well-known generators to NS formats. Currently, NS (version 2) written in C++ and OTcl (Tcl script language with Object-oriented extensions developed at MIT) is available. This document talks briefly about the basic structure of NS, and explains in detail how to use NS mostly by giving examples. Most of the figures that are used in describing the NS basic structure and network components are from the 5th VINT/NS Simulator Tutorial/Workshop slides and the NS Manual (formerly called "NS Notes and Documentation"), modified little bit as needed. For more information about NS and the related tools, visit the VINT project home page.