Network simulation

In communication and computer network research, network simulation is a technique where a program models the behavior of a network either by calculating the interaction between the different network entities (hosts/packets, etc.) using mathematical formulas, or actually capturing and playing back observations from a production network. The behavior of the network and the various applications and services it supports can then be observed in a test lab; various attributes of the environment can also be modified in a controlled manner to assess how the network would behave under different conditions.

A network simulator is software that predicts the behavior of a computer network. Since communication Networks have become too complex for traditional analytical methods to provide an accurate understanding of system behavior, network simulators are used. In simulators, the computer network is typically modeled with devices, links, applications etc. and the performance is analysed. Simulators typically come with support for the most popular technologies and networks in use today.

Most of the commercial simulators are GUI driven, while some network simulators are CLI driven. The network model / configuration describes the state of the network (nodes, routers, switches, links) and the events (data transmissions, packet error etc.). An important output of simulations are the trace files. Trace files log every packet, every event that occurred in the simulation and are used for analysis. Network simulators can also provide other tools to facilitate visual analysis of trends and potential trouble spots.

Most network simulators use discrete event simulation, in which a list of pending "events" is stored, and those events are processed in order, with some events triggering future events—such as the event of the arrival of a packet at one node triggering the event of the arrival of that packet at a downstream node.

Simulation of networks is a very complex task. For example, if congestion is high, then estimation of the average occupancy is challenging because of high variance. To estimate the likelihood of a buffer overflow in a network, the time required for an accurate answer can be extremely large. Specialized techniques such as "control variates" and "importance sampling" have been developed to speed simulation.

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