According to the Network Simulator (NS)'s main page, NS is a discrete event simulator targeted at networking researches. It is under supervisions of UCB, LBNL and VINT project. NS provides many important protocols and attractive features in the networking world. Some of them are listed here:

1. Routing:

1.1 Unicast Routing Protocols:

1.1.1 Direct Routing

1.1.2 Static Routing

1.1.3 Session Routing

1.1.4 DV Routing

1.2 Multicast Routing Protocols:

1.2.1 Centralized Multicast: this one is a sparse-mode implementation similar to PIM-SM (Protocol Independent Multicast - Sparse Mode).

1.2.2 Dense Mode: this is an implementation of a dense-mode-like protocol.

1.2.3 Shared Tree Mode: this is a simplified version of a shared tree multicast protocol.

1.2.4 Bi-directional Shared Tree Mode: this is an experimental version of a bi-directional shared tree protocol.

2. TCP Agents: both one-way TCP and two-way TCP.

3. UDP Agents

4. IP Network Objects

5. Agent/SRM

6. Mobile Networking

7. Satellite Networking

The details of the provided protocols, the given features, and the other about NS implementation are available in NS Manual which can be downloaded from the NS's manual page.

 

Though the developers have some considerable confidence in NS, NS's users should keep in mind that NS is an on-going project. Software bugs are still being discovered and corrected. If the users' models go wrong or could not show what the users expect, it is the responsibility of users themselves to justify whether the weird things are caused by NS. However, it is recommended in the NS's main page to check the users's scripts first.

 

For downloading NS, click here. Users have 2 choices: getting all components in one time (ns-allinone) and getting the desired pieces separately (getting the pieces).