11.3 Protocol Agents

There are several agents supported in the simulator. These are their names in OTcl:

$\begin{longtable}{rl} TCP & a \lq\lq Tahoe'' TCP sender (cwnd = 1 on any loss) \\ ... ...\ \\ rtProto/DV & distance-vector routing protocol agent \\ \end{longtable}$

Agents are used in the implementation of protocols at various layers. Thus, for some transport protocols (e.g. UDP) the distribution of packet sizes and/or inter-departure times may be dictated by some separate object representing the demands of an application. To this end, agents expose an application programming interface (API) to the application. For agents used in the implementation of lower-layer protocols (e.g. routing agents), size and departure timing is generally dictated by the agent's own processing of protocol messages.

Tom Henderson 2014-12-17