Modeling and Simulating Packet-Switching Networks with OMNeT++

Preliminary Work: Installation of OMNeT++ and INETFramework

You need to decide on a working directory structure before installing the simulation code and additional packages. I will assume you use a Linux machine (I also use a WindowsXP laptop, mainly for presentations, with cygwin environment installed. Cygwin environment lets me use my linux configuration almost unchanged on a WindowsXP machine). I would recommend this approach:

1. Create a directory $HOME/oppsim that will contain all your simulation work.
2. Download OMNeT++ and INETFramework from www.omnetpp.org.
3. Install OMNeT++ under the directory $HOME/oppsim/omnetpp.
4. Install INETFramework under the directory $HOME/oppsim/INET.
5. You can then proceed with creating separate directories under $HOME/oppsim for each of simulation experiments, such as tictoc1, tictoc2 and so on.

Here are the relevant details of the system and software environment on which I test the models and run the simulations.

Warm-up Tutorials

• Introduction to simulation with OMNeT: TicToc tutorials 1-12
• Adding a simple routing table: TicToc tutorial 13

• A network of 4 hosts and 2 packet switches
• Packet-switching network performance analysis via batch execution of a series of simulations
• Experiments with large packet-switching network topologies (produced with the help of a slightly modified version of the PSGen topology generation tool)

TCP/IP Tutorials

INET Framework contains models for the TCP/IP protocol stack. Let's first have a look at the design of the INET Framework:

• A guided tour of the INET Framework
• A tutorial on TCP simulations with INET Framework

• First TCP/IPv4 simulation: file sender/receiver over TCP/IPv4
• Dumbbell topology (IPv4): multiple TCP sessions sharing a bandwidth-limited bottleneck link between routers

• RED example (not ready yet)

Appendix: Useful Information

• How to extend INET with your own C++ code
• How to do efficient ev << logging
• Improving code readability?

Appendix: Important References on Credibility of Simulation Based Research (in Telecommunications)

• K. Pawlikowski, H. D. J. Jeong, and J. S. R. Lee, On Credibility of Simulation Studies of Telecommunication Networks, (A version of this article was published in the January 2002 issue of IEEE Communications Magazine).
• T. R. Andel, and A. Yasinsac, On the Credibility of Manet Simulations, IEEE Computer, July 2006, pages 48--54.
• S. Kurkowski, T. Camp, and M. Colagrosso, MANET Simulation Studies: The Current State and New Simulation Tools, Technical Report CSM-MCS-05-02, Department of Math. and Computer Sciences, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado, USA (downloaded from http://toilers.mines.edu/EXTERNAL/twiki/bin/view/Toilers/PublicationList).
• I. Stojmenovic, Simulations in Wireless Sensor and Ad Hoc Networks: Matching and Advancing Models, Metrics, and Solutions, IEEE Communications Magazine, December 2008.
• W. Dally, Performance analysis and Simulation chapters of Principles and Practices of Interconnection Networks, Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann (2004).
• R. Jain, Introduction to simulation, Analysis of simulation results and Commonly used distributions chapters of The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis: Techniques for Experimental Design, Measurement, Simulation, and Modelling, John Wiley (1991).
• Traffic generators for Internet traffic.
• H. Perros, Computer Simulation Techniques: The Definitive Introduction!.