The Network Simulator - ns-2

Note: The project has migrated these web pages to a wiki. This page can now be found here.

Ns is a discrete event simulator targeted at networking research. Ns provides substantial support for simulation of TCP, routing, and multicast protocols over wired and wireless (local and satellite) networks.

Ns began as a variant of the REAL network simulator in 1989 and has evolved substantially over the past few years. In 1995 ns development was supported by DARPA through the VINT project at LBL, Xerox PARC, UCB, and USC/ISI. Currently ns development is support through DARPA with SAMAN and through NSF with CONSER, both in collaboration with other researchers including ACIRI. Ns has always included substantal contributions from other researchers, including wireless code from the UCB Daedelus and CMU Monarch projects and Sun Microsystems. For documentation on recent changes, see the version 2 change log.

Read this first:

While we have considerable confidence in ns, ns is not a polished and finished product, but the result of an on-going effort of research and development. In particular, bugs in the software are still being discovered and corrected. Users of ns are responsible for verifying for themselves that their simulations are not invalidated by bugs. We are working to help the user with this by significantly expanding and automating the validation tests and demos.

Similarly, users are responsible for verifying for themselves that their simulations are not invalidated because the model implemented in the simulator is not the model that they were expecting. The ongoing Ns Manual should help in this process.

Links to help getting started

Getting ns and avoiding problems
Documentation:
core documentation:
- ns frequently asked questions
- limitations: limitations and assumptions of ns, advice on running simulations
- introductory: Marc Greis's tutorial (now maintained by VINT group), also see "NS for Beginners" by Altman and Jimenez
- reference: Ns Manual (formerly called "ns Notes and Documentation")
- errata: Installation Problems and Bug Fixes
development help:
- NS-related Mailing Lists
- debugging tips,
- change history,
- read-only CVS history,
- C++ class hierarchy (outdated C++/OTcl class hierarchy contributed by Antoine Clerget),
- Discussion web board [in Korean], [in Chinese]
additional docs:
- ns workshops and presentations
- ns by Example (another tutorial by Jae Chung and Mark Claypool of WPI)
- Tips and statistical data for running large simulations in ns
- Changes to the ns multicast internals
- contributed documentation
- a comparison of ns-1 and ns-2
- contributors of ns code (credits)
Applications of ns:
Educational uses:
- general information about using ns/nam for networking education
- web index of educational scripts
Contributed code and contributing code:
- Contributed Modules
- How to contribute your ns code
- Research using ns
- Parallel/Distributed ns (PDns) from the COMPASS research group at Georgia Tech.
Other applications:
Search ns web pages

Related Work

ns [email protected]