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.

Figure 1. Simplified User's View of NS

As shown in Figure 1, in a simplified user's view, NS is Object-oriented Tcl (OTcl) script interpreter that has a simulation event scheduler and network component object libraries, and network setup (plumbing) module libraries (actually, plumbing modules are implemented as member functions of the base simulator object). In other words, to use NS, you program in OTcl script language. To setup and run a simulation network, a user should write an OTcl script that initiates an event scheduler, sets up the network topology using the network objects and the plumbing functions in the library, and tells traffic sources when to start and stop transmitting packets through the event scheduler. The term "plumbing" is used for a network setup, because setting up a network is plumbing possible data paths among network objects by setting the "neighbor" pointer of an object to the address of an appropriate object. When a user wants to make a new network object, he or she can easily make an object either by writing a new object or by making a compound object from the object library, and plumb the data path through the object. This may sound like complicated job, but the plumbing OTcl modules actually make the job very easy. The power of NS comes from this plumbing.

Another major component of NS beside network objects is the event scheduler. An event in NS is a packet ID that is unique for a packet with scheduled time and the pointer to an object that handles the event. In NS, an event scheduler keeps track of simulation time and fires all the events in the event queue scheduled for the current time by invoking appropriate network components, which usually are the ones who issued the events, and let them do the appropriate action associated with packet pointed by the event. Network components communicate with one another passing packets, however this does not consume actual simulation time. All the network components that need to spend some simulation time handling a packet (i.e. need a delay) use the event scheduler by issuing an event for the packet and waiting for the event to be fired to itself before doing further action handling the packet. For example, a network switch component that simulates a switch with 20 microseconds of switching delay issues an event for a packet to be switched to the scheduler as an event 20 microsecond later. The scheduler after 20 microsecond dequeues the event and fires it to the switch component, which then passes the packet to an appropriate output link component. Another use of an event scheduler is timer. For example, TCP needs a timer to keep track of a packet transmission time out for retransmission (transmission of a packet with the same TCP packet number but different NS packet ID). Timers use event schedulers in a similar manner that delay does. The only difference is that timer measures a time value associated with a packet and does an appropriate action related to that packet after a certain time goes by, and does not simulate a delay.

NS is written not only in OTcl but in C++ also. For efficiency reason, NS separates the data path implementation from control path implementations. In order to reduce packet and event processing time (not simulation time), the event scheduler and the basic network component objects in the data path are written and compiled using C++. These compiled objects are made available to the OTcl interpreter through an OTcl linkage that creates a matching OTcl object for each of the C++ objects and makes the control functions and the configurable variables specified by the C++ object act as member functions and member variables of the corresponding OTcl object. In this way, the controls of the C++ objects are given to OTcl. It is also possible to add member functions and variables to a C++ linked OTcl object. The objects in C++ that do not need to be controlled in a simulation or internally used by another object do not need to be linked to OTcl. Likewise, an object (not in the data path) can be entirely implemented in OTcl. Figure 2 shows an object hierarchy example in C++ and OTcl. One thing to note in the figure is that for C++ objects that have an OTcl linkage forming a hierarchy, there is a matching OTcl object hierarchy very similar to that of C++.

Figure 2. C++ and OTcl: The Duality

Figure 3. Architectural View of NS

Figure 3 shows the general architecture of NS. In this figure a general user (not an NS developer) can be thought of standing at the left bottom corner, designing and running simulations in Tcl using the simulator objects in the OTcl library. The event schedulers and most of the network components are implemented in C++ and available to OTcl through an OTcl linkage that is implemented using tclcl. The whole thing together makes NS, which is a OO extended Tcl interpreter with network simulator libraries.

This section briefly examined the general structure and architecture of NS. At this point, one might be wondering about how to obtain NS simulation results. As shown in Figure 1, when a simulation is finished, NS produces one or more text-based output files that contain detailed simulation data, if specified to do so in the input Tcl (or more specifically, OTcl) script. The data can be used for simulation analysis (two simulation result analysis examples are presented in later sections) or as an input to a graphical simulation display tool called Network Animator (NAM) that is developed as a part of VINT project. NAM has a nice graphical user interface similar to that of a CD player (play, fast forward, rewind, pause and so on), and also has a display speed controller. Furthermore, it can graphically present information such as throughput and number of packet drops at each link, although the graphical information cannot be used for accurate simulation analysis.