• 17 The ns-3 Network Simulator

    In this chapter we take a somewhat cursory look at the ns-3 simulator, intended as a replacement for ns-2. The project is managed by the NS-3 Consortium, and all materials are available at nsnam.org [nsnam.org].

    Ns-3 represents a rather sharp break from ns-2. Gone is the Tcl programming interface; instead, ns-3 simulation programs are written in the C++ language, with extensive calls to the ns-3 library, although they are often still referred to as simulation “scripts”. As the simulator core itself is also written in C++, this in some cases allows improved interaction between configuration and execution. However, configuration and execution are still in most cases quite separate: at the end of the simulation script comes a call Simulator::Run() – akin to ns-2’s $ns run – at which point the user-written C++ has done its job and the library takes over.

    To configure a simple simulation, an ns-2 Tcl script had to create nodes and links, create network-connection “agents” attached to nodes, and create traffic-generating applications attached to agents. Much the same applies to ns-3, but in addition each node must be configured with its network interfaces, and each network interface must be assigned an IP address.

  • 17.1 Installing and Running ns-3

    We here outline the steps for installing ns-3 under Linux from the “allinone” tar file, assuming that all prerequisite packages (such as gcc) are already in place. Much more general installation instructions can be found at www.nsnam.org. In particular, serious users are likely to want to download the current Mercurial repository directly. Information is also available for Windows and Macintosh installation, although perhaps the simplest option for Windows users is to run ns-3 in a Linux virtual machine.

    The first step is to unzip the tar file; this should leave a directory named ns-allinone-3.nn, where nn reflects the version number (20 in the author’s installation as of this 2014 writing). This directory is the root of the ns-3 system; it contains a build.py (python) script and the primary ns-3 directory ns-3.nn. All that is necessary is to run the build.py script:

    ./build.py