II. Finding Documentation

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In this section I am going to list some sources for documentation for ns and related packages. If you know any other sources, or if any of the links have expired, please send email to ns-users mailing list.

II.1. Documentation for ns&nam
The following documentation for ns and nam is available from the main ns web page at UCB.

"ns Notes and Documentation (now renamed the ns Manual)" could be called the "main manual" for ns and is available in Postscript format.
An HTML version (currently without diagrams ) of nsN&D (now renamed ns Manual) is available here.
A manual page for ns is included in the distribution in the ns directory. There is a HTML-ized version here, but it might be out-dated.
There is a ps version of the nam user-manual which is available from the nam page. You can also get an ASCII version from here.
You can also get slides from the second ns workshop from this page. They don't really contain more information than the "ns Notes and Documentation" (now renamed ns Manual) document, though it might be a bit easier to understand and use.
If you can't get ns to compile, if it crashes, or if you have any other similar problems, take a look at the ns-problems page before you ask on the mailing list.
If you have any general questions about ns or nam, you can send them to the ns-users mailing list. If you're not sure if your question has been asked before, check the Archive for the mailing list.

II.2. Documentation for Tcl
Tcl is fairly simple and if you already have some programming skills, you should be able to learn most of what you need for simple scenarios as you go along. However, I will try to provide some interesting links for the more ambitious users who are not willing (or able) to buy a Tcl book.

The Tcl8.0/Tk8.0 Manual is basically a collection of hypertext manual pages.
A draft for a Tcl/Tk book is available in postscript format for personal use. Only the first 94 pages are relevant for Tcl, the rest of the book is about Tk and more complicated aspects of Tcl.
I also found a short OTcl Tutorial.
Another good starting point for looking for Tcl documentation is the Yahoo Tcl/Tk category.

II.3. Documentation for C++
I'd like to note that you don't need any C++ programming knowledge unless you want to add new functionality to ns.

Perhaps the best source for learning C++ is the book "The C++ Programming Language" by Bjarne Stroustrup.
If you don't want to buy a book, you can take a look at this C++ tutorial.
You can find an ANSI C++ standard draft on this page
And again, if you want to look for information on the web yourself, check out Yahoo's C/C++ category.

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