NetSim – Introduction

Introduction to modeling and simulation of networks

A network simulator enables users to virtually create a network comprising of devices, links,
applications etc, and study the behavior and performance of the Network.

Some example applications of network simulators are

Protocol performance analysis Application modeling and analysis Network design and planning
Research and development of new networking technologies Test and verification

The typical steps followed when simulating any network are:

1. Building the model – Create a network with devices, links, applications etc.
2. Running the simulation - Run the discrete event simulation (DES) and log different
performance metrics
3. Visualizing the simulation - Use the packet animator to view the flow of packets.
4. Analyzing the results - Examine output performance metrics such as throughput, delay, loss
etc. at multiple levels - network, link, queue, application etc.
5. Developing your own protocol / algorithm - Extend existing algorithms by modifying the
simulator’s source C code

Creating “New” Simulations

The Simulation window loads up once user selects the desired network technology from the New
Menu.

To create a Network scenario

Click on New Simulation and select the desired kind of network to simulate
Save

To save experiment, select File Save, then specify the Experiment Name, Description (Optional) and
click Save. The short cut for the same is Ctrl + S.

Save as

To save a previously saved experiment in a different location without overwriting the existing copy,
Save As option can be used. The short cut for the same is Shift + Ctrl + S

Settings

The settings menu provides user’s access to the simulation environment settings.

Environment Settings:

The Environment Settings window is used to switch between Grid View and Map View backgrounds
in supported network technologies. For Grid view, users can configure the Grid environment length
in meters whereas for Map view users can configure the latitude and longitude respectively.
Modeling and Simulation of a simple network
This section will demonstrate how to create a basic network scenario and analyze in NetSim. Let us
consider Internetworks. To create a new scenario, go to New Simulation Internetworks

Creating a Network scenario

In this example, a network with two subnets is designed. Let us say the subnet 1 consists of two
wired nodes connected via a Switch and the other subnet consists of one wired node. Both the
subnets are connected using a Router. Traffic in the Network flows from a wired node in subnet 1 to
the wired node in subnet 2.

Perform the following steps to create this network design.

Step 1: Drop the devices. Click on Node icon and select Wired Node

Click on the environment (the grid) where you want the Wired Node to be placed. In this way, place
two more wired nodes. Similarly, to place a Switch and a Router, click on the respective device and
click on the environment at the desired location.

Step 2: Connecting devices on the environment. : With respect to establishing connection between
devices, and in order to connect two devices, you will have to select the link and then left click on
one device, free the mouse button, then click on the second device and free the mouse button. The
wired links may disappear if you right click anywhere in the Environment. Clicking and dragging
without freeing the mouse pointer would displace the device in the environment.

For example, select link and the click on Switch followed by router to connect them. In this manner,
continue to link all devices.
Configuring devices and links in the scenario
Step 1: To configure any device, right click on the device and select properties.

User can set values according to their requirement. Modify the properties of any device and click on
Ok. In this example default values are accepted.
Step 2: To configure the links, right click on any Link and select Properties

Display settings
In NetSim, users can Turn-On or Turn-Off display information such as IP Address of the devices, Link
speed etc. For doing this click on Display settings as shown below

Modeling Traffic
After the network is configured, user needs to model traffic from Wired Node 2 to Wired Node 3.
This is done using the application icon. Click on the Application icon present on the ribbon
In screen shot shown below the Application type is set to CBR, source_ID is 2 and Destination_ID is 3.
Click on OK.

Application Configuration:
1. In a wired network with routers and switches OSPF, Spanning tree etc takes times to converge and
hence it is a good practice to set the application start time greater than OSPF convergence time. In
general, the applications can start at 20s for smaller networks and should be increased as the size of
the network grows.

2. If applications are started before OSPF convergence, then

Packets generated before OSPF table convergence may be dropped at the gateway router.

The application may also stop if ICMP is enabled in the router

If TCP is enabled TCP may stop after the re-try limit is reached (since the SYN packets would not reach
the destination)

3. For MANET networks the application start time should be a min of 5s, since that amount of time is
required for convergence of OLSR/ZRP

Logging Packet/ Event Trace

Packet and Event Trace files are useful for detailed simulation analysis. By default, these are not
enabled since it slows down the simulation. To enable logging of Packet Trace / Event Trace click on
the icon in the tool bar as shown below. Set the file name and select the required attributes to be
logged. For more information, please refer sections 7.5 and 7.6 respectively.
 Run Simulation

For simulating the network scenario created, click on Run Simulation present in the Ribbon

Set the Simulation Time to 10 seconds. Click on OK.

NetSim Interactive Simulation

NetSim allows users to interact with the simulation at runtime via a socket or through a file. User
Interactions make simulation more realistic by allowing command execution to view/modify certain
device parameters during runtime.

Working: This section will demonstrate how to perform Interactive simulation for a simple network
scenario.

Let us consider Internetworks. To create a new scenario, go to New  Internetworks

Click & drop Wired Nodes and Router onto the Simulation Environment and link them as shown
below or otherwise Open the scenario for Interactive Simulation which is available in “<NetSim
Install Dir>\Docs\ Sample_Configuration\Internetworks\Interactive Simulation”

• Click on Application icon present in the top ribbon and set the Application type as CBR.
The Source_Id is 1 and Destination_Id is 2.

• Set Start Time as 30 Sec

• Enable Plots and Packet trace options

• Click on run simulation option and In the Run time Interaction tab set Interactive
Simulation as True and click on Accept
• Click on run simulation and set Simulation Time as 500 sec. (It is recommended to specify a
longer simulation time to ensure that there is sufficient time for the user to execute the
various commands and see the effect of that before Simulation ends) and click OK

• Simulation (NetSimCore.exe) will start running and will display a message “waiting for first
client to connect” as shown below:

• After Simulation window opens, goto Network scenario and right click on Router_3 or any
other node and select NetSim Console option
 • Now Client (NetSimCLI.exe) will start running and it will try to establish connection with
NetSimCore.exe. After connection is established the window will look similar like this
shown below:

• After this the command line interface can be used to execute the supported commands

Note: Commands are not a case sensitive

1. Simulation specific (Not applicable for file based interactive simulation)

1. Pause
2. PauseAt
3. Continue
4. Stop
5. Exit
6. Reconnect
Pause: To pause the currently running simulation

PauseAt: To pause the currently running simulation with respect to particular time (Ex: To Pause
simulation at 70.2 sec use command as PauseAt 70.2)

Continue: To start the currently paused simulation

Stop: To stop the currently running simulation (NetSimCore.exe)

Exit: To exit from the client (NetSimCLI.exe)
Reconnect: To reconnect client (NetSimCLI.exe) to simulation (NetSimCore.exe) when we rerun
simulation again

2. Ping Command

• The ping command is one of the most often used networking utilities for troubleshooting
network problems

• You can use the ping command to test the availability of a networking device (usually a
computer) on a network

• When you ping a device you send that device a short message, which it then sends back
(the echo)

• If you receive a reply then the device is in Network, if you don’t then the device is faulty,
disconnected, switched off, incorrectly configured

• You can use the ping cmd with an IP address or Device name
• ICMP_Status should be set as True in all nodes(Wired_Node and Router)

• Right click on Wired_Node_1 and go to properties. Under General properties enable

Wireshark Capture option as “Online”

Ping <IP address> e.g. ping 11.4.1.2

Ping <NodeName> e.g. ping Wired_Node_2

Ping Command Results:

• After simulation open packet trace and filter ICMP_EchoRequest and ICMP_EchoReply
from CONTROL_PACKET_TYPE/APP_NAME column

Open Wireshark and apply filter ICMP.

3. Route Commands
1. route print
2. route delete
3. route add
 In order to view the entire contents of the IP routing table, use following commands route
print

route print

• You will see the routing table entries with network destinations and the gateways to which
packets are forwarded when they are headed to that destination. Unless you’ve already
added static routes to the table, everything you see here will be dynamically generated

• In order to delete route in the IP routing table you will type a command using the following
syntax

route delete destination_network

• So, to delete the route with destination network 11.5.0.0, all we’d have to do is type this
command

route delete 11.5.1.2

• To check whether route has been deleted or not check again using route print command
• To add a static route to the table, you will type a command using the following syntax
 route ADD destination_network MASK subnet_mask gateway_ip metric_cost interface

• So, for example, if you wanted to add a route specifying that all traffic bound for the
11.5.1.2 subnet went to a gateway at 11.5.1.1

route ADD 11.5.1.2 MASK 255.255.0.0 11.5.1.1 METRIC 100 IF 2

• If you were to use the route print command to look at the table now, you would see your
new static route

Note: Entry added in IP table by routing protocol continuously gets updated. If a user tries to remove a route via route
delete command, there is always a chance that routing protocol will re-enter this entry again.