Lab 1.

Internet Connect for Home Network

Lab 1: Evaluating Internet Connection Choices for a Small Home PC Network

Objective

This lab teaches the basics of using OPNET IT Guru. We investigate application performance and
capacity planning, by changing the link speed between a home LAN and its ISP.

Overview

OPNETs IT Guru provides a Virtual Network Environment that models the behaviour of networks,
including its routers, switches, protocols, servers, and individual applications. The Virtual Network
Environment allows IT managers, network and system planners, and operations staff to more
effectively diagnose difficult problems, validate changes before they are implemented, and plan for
future scenarios such as traffic growth and network failures.

You can do what if analyses (called scenarios in IT Guru) on network designs, just as you can on
spreadsheets with financial business models. However, instead of looking at bottom line financial
numbers, you will be looking at how response times, latency (delays) and other network performance
measures will change under different network design approaches.

To create a network simulation (called a project in IT Guru), you specify the nodes (computers,
switches, routers, etc.) in your network, the links between nodes, and the applications that will be
running on the nodes.

In this exercise, the initial simulation (project) has been built for you. It models a familys home PC
network, which has three PCs connected to the Internet for game playing; web browsing, E-mail,
audio streaming, and FTP (file transfer protocol).

Your objective will be to conduct a series of what-if simulations (scenarios) to see how
performance differs if the family connects to the Internet using
1) a slow modem downloading at 20 kbps,
2) a fast modem downloading at 40 kbps,
3) a cable modem or DSL line downloading at 512 kbps, or
4) a T1 line (discussed in Chapter 6) with download speed of 1.544 Mbps

For each scenario, you will set the download speed in the simulation model, run a simulation, and
view the results. You will be addressing the question of whether faster connections are worth
higher prices for the home network.

Lab Instructions

Step 1: Open Lab file

IT Guru consists of projects and scenarios. Each scenario represents the different what-if analysis
performed by the users. Scenarios may contain different versions of the same network or models of
different networks. A project consists of one or more network scenarios. In this lab, you will create
4 different scenarios comparing application performance with different connection speeds to the ISP.

1. Start IT Guru.
2. Select File Open and make sure Project is selected from the pull-down menu at the
 Lab 1. Internet Connect for Home Network

top.

3. Scroll down to the project named Home_LAN, select it and click OK.

The figure above shows the simulated network.

There are three PCs doing different tasks in this network. Each PC connects to the familys 100
Mbps Ethernet switch via a UTP connection. The switch connects to the router, also via UTP. The
cable modem is not shown; it is implicit in the WAN link connecting the home PC network to the
Internet. Three Internet servers provide different services to the client PCs.

Near the top of the figure are two boxes that do not represent physical components: Applications
and Profiles. The Applications node contains data about the applications used in the network, such
as Web browsing. More specifically, traffic is associated with each application, so there is a
difference between light Web browsing and heavy Web browsing. Internal file service and
 Lab 1. Internet Connect for Home Network

print service traffic are not shown; these would be too light to make a difference in performance
because the Internet WAN connection is the weak link in this network. In the Profiles icon,
different applications are associated with different PCs.

The complete topology is laid out and the attributes for all the objects are pre- configured except
the link data rate between the Router and the Internet cloud, this is our WAN link.

Step 2: Configure the Link to 20 Kbps

In your first scenario, you will configure the WAN link as a 20 kbps dial-up line.
1. Right-click on the WAN link, select Edit Attributes.

Here we can see the different link attributes. We will be changing the data rate attribute of this
link.
2. Click in the Value field of the data rate attribute and select Edit
3. Enter 20000; press Enter and then click OK.

Step 3: Configure and Run the Simulation

To simulate this network, we will use high fidelity discrete event simulation. The model simulates
client/server application packets, which represent real world network traffic.
1. Click on the configure/run simulation button.

2. Make sure the Simulation Duration is set to 8 hours to represent a typical day.
3. Click Run, monitor the progress bar as the simulation proceeds.
4. When the simulation completes, Click Close.

Step 4: View Results

We can now view various statistics including the web application Response Time experienced by
the Researcher and the WAN link utilization. Follow the instructions below to view the statistics.
Performance for the WAN link
 Lab 1. Internet Connect for Home Network

1. Right-click on the WAN link and select View Results to view the utilization results for this
link.

2. Expand point-to-point and select utilization in both directions.

3. Select Overlaid Statistics from the pull-down menu on the bottom right- hand corner to place the
results in the same panel.

4. Select Show and then click Close in the View Results window.

Performance for PC2 (Researcher PC)

 Lab 1. Internet Connect for Home Network

5. Right-click on the PC2 Researcher client and select View Results to view the web Response
Time and Traffic Received.
6. Expand Client Http and select Page Response Time (seconds). Also make sure that the pull-
down menu on the bottom right-hand corner is set to As Is.
7. Click Close in the View Results window.

8. You can use the hide or show all graphs button to hide/show the graphs.

Your results should be similar to the graphs above. The download link Utilization averages about
80% and the upload link Utilization about 2%. With a download link utilization of 80%, this does
not give much available bandwidth for potential new applications or users. The Response Time that
the Researcher experiences is in the range of 5 to 7.5 seconds, which is painfully long. This slow
WAN link is badly overloaded.

Step 5: 40 kbps Scenario

Implement a fast modem connection downloading at 40 Kbps. This is realistic throughput for a
modem whose download speed is rated at 56 Kbps.
1. Select Scenarios Duplicate Scenario and name the scenario as
40K_dialup_connection.
2. Click OK. This creates a copy of the existing scenario.

Step 6: Configure the Link to 40 Kbps

Right-click on the WAN link and change the data rate attribute to 40000.

Step 7: Run the 40 Kbps Simulation

Rerun the simulation. You can refer to the steps given previously for setting the duration and
running the simulation.

Step 8: View Results for 40Kbps Scenario

Follow the same steps mentioned before to view the link utilization, and
 Lab 1. Internet Connect for Home Network

Response Time by the researcher PC.

Notice, that the link Utilization is reduced by half.

The web application Response Time also went down from about 6 seconds to around 2.25
seconds. This is a significant improvement, both, in Utilization and Response Time.

Step 9: Set the link to 512 Kbps and run the simulation

In the third scenario, you will simulate a 512 kbps download speed. This is a realistic downloading
throughput for a cable modem or DSL line. This WAN connection

Duplicate the scenario as before and name it 512K_Cable_Modem_connection.

Set the data rate for the WAN link to 512000.
Rerun the simulation.
View the results for link utilization, Response Time and Traffic Received by the
Researcher PC.

The Utilization went down to 4% and the Response Time for the Researcher went down to
 Lab 1. Internet Connect for Home Network

0.15 seconds. The cable modem improves our download times greatly. Response time is very
good.

Step 10: Configure the link to T1 line and run the simulation

The ISP also provides residential T1 connection. T1 lines, offer a rated speed of 1.544 Mbps in
both directions. This is also its actual throughput. The fourth scenario will consider the benefits of
using a T1 WAN link to the ISP.

Duplicate the scenario again and name it T1_connection.

Change the data rate of the WAN link to T1 from the pull-down menu.
Rerun the simulation.

Step 11: Compare Results

Rather than viewing the results for the T1 link alone, let us compare the results of Utilization and
Response Times for all the 4 scenarios. This will give us a broader picture of the effect of
changing the data rate.

1. Select Results Compare Results

2. To compare the utilization statistics, choose the following statistics:
3. Make sure that All Scenarios is select.

4. Click Show. To compare the Response Time, unselect the previous statistics, change the filter on
the right-hand bottom corner from As Is to average and then choose the following statistics:
 Lab 1. Internet Connect for Home Network

Here are the results

We can see from these results that as the data rate increases from 20K to 40K to 512K, the
Utilization becomes better. Also the Web Application response time becomes better.

However, the Response Time and Utilization do not get affected much by changing the data rate
from 512K to T1 line. For the current number of users, the T1 connection does not offer much benefit.
 Lab 1. Internet Connect for Home Network

This shows that upgrading to a T1 link will not be economically feasible with the performance
improvement that it gives.

Further research

So far, every scenario had step-by-step instructions. Now, here are some advanced scenarios for you
to run.

Advanced Scenario 1. Many statistics are being collected like the throughput and the
queuing delay on the WAN link. View these 2 results for the four scenarios and prepare
a brief report of your observation.

Advanced Scenario 2. Create a duplicate scenario. Change the data rate of the WAN link
between the Router and the ISP to get an average response time of 1 sec. (Hint: From the
results, we can see that the data rate might fall between 40 Kbps and 512 Kbps.) What
WAN speed did your find to give this response time?

Advanced Scenario 3. There is continuous streaming between the music server and PC1
defined by a traffic demand object. You can view this object by selecting View
Demand Objects Show All in the menu. Try changing the Traffic volume for this
demand. (Hint: Edit the Traffic (packets/sec) and Traffic (bits/sec) attributes of the
Demand Object.) Observe its effect on the web response time for the researcher. Briefly
describe the data values you changed and the impact on the researcher.

Advanced Scenario 4. What would happen if there were FIVE more PCs? Select and
Copy the Researcher PC. Then paste the PC. Copy more PCs in the similar manner.
Connect these FIVE PCs to the switch by copying and pasting the links connecting the
first researcher PC and the switch. Run the simulation and see view the web Response
Times of each of these PCs for all the data rates. What did you find?

Advanced Scenario 5. Here is a harder task. Add more applications to the researcher
PC and check the response time that it gets. (Hint: To add applications to a client, you
need to edit the attributes of the Profile object and edit the Profile Configuration.)

References:
http://www.opnet.com/university_program/teaching_with_opnet/textbooks_and_materials/itg_pa
nko.html
Lab 1. Internet Connect for Home Network