Spring term 2008 TELCOM 2321 - CS 2520 Wide Area Networks

Lab assignment 1
Report due: Friday Mar 7, 2008, 5pm Groups of up to 3 students are allowed One report per group is required Send report to GSA
GSA: Chih-Kuang Lin Oce hours: Fri 12-2pm, 714 SIS email: chl21+@pitt.edu

Introduction

The purpose of this lab assignment is to familiarize with the ns2 network simulator and run a few simulations of dierent scenarios. ns2 is a discrete event simulator used to model network protocols on dierent environments, such as wired, wireless and satellite networks. It is an open-source software and is widely used for both educational and research purposes. One of the main advantages of using a network simulation environment such as ns2 is the ability to test protocol behaviours in situations where a real-life experiment is dicult or impossible to carry on. ns2 simulator is based on two languages: C++ as the programming language for the actual simulation part and OTcl, a scripting language, for the control part. C++ is used for the actual simulations because it is powerful, ecient and fast to run. On the other hand, OTcl is used to congure the simulation environment, set the required parameters and control the simulation. This is because the objects used by the simulator are well established and when the user needs just to put them together to create a simulation environment and to modify some parameters, it is faster to write and change an OTcl simulation script rather than modify and recompile the whole C++ simulator code. When additional functionalities are needed that are not available with standard ns2 objects, a user is allowed to write custom C++ code to implement new objects to be integrated in ns2. Lab assignments for this course will use the standard ns2 objects, so you are not required to modify C++ code. You are required to submit a written report by the due date where you must answer all the questions asked in the following sections. Add any gure, screenshot, script code that is required or that you consider relevant.

How to use ns2 for this lab

In order to use ns2 simulator for the course purposes, you have two choices: either using the School or Department computing labs or installing ns2 on your own PC. To use ns2 in SIS computing lab, each student must have an account to access the Sun workstations at the 8th oor. To get a new account please contact Mark Steggert (mark@sis.pitt.edu). Once you have an account, you can run the OTcl simulation scripts on each workstation using the ns command. To use ns2 in CS department, you must access the department compute server (elements.cs.pitt.edu) and compile the software on your AFS space. ns2 is not supported by the CS technical sta.

In case you wish to run ns2 on your own PC, instructions on how to compile and install the simulator on dierent platforms are available at http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/ns-build.html For assistance, please ask GSA Chih-Kuang Lin. Oce hours are Fri 12.00-2:00pm at 714 SIS, e-mail is chl21+@pitt.edu

Where to start from

First thing to do is to become familiar with the ns2 simulation environment by learning how to write simple simulation scripts. A good source of information is Marc Greiss tutorial, available at http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/tutorial Remember that, in order to run an OTcl script, you need to open a system shell and type the ns command followed by the script le name: [user@host ns2]$ ns example.tcl You are required to read sections I to VI of the tutorial and run the proposed scripts. Although the tutorial scripts are available for download, you are advised to write them step by step while you read through the tutorial. This will allow you to learn how to prepare the basic script structure, how to build a topology and set parameters and how to use other useful features. Question 1 - Report what you have learned about ns2 and what you are able to do at this point. Question 2 - Write and run a simulation script that simulates a star topology with four edge nodes (nodes N1 to N4 ) and a single core node (node N5 ). Each edge node is connected to the core node with a full duplex link, propagation delay is 10 ms for each link. Three CBR-over-UDP sources are attached to each edge node, so that each edge node sends packets to every other edge node. Each source generates 200 pps and packets have dierent size depending on the the destination node. Sources also start sending packets at dierent times, depending on the destination. Packet sizes and transmission start times for each destination are as follows: Destination 1 2 3 4 Size (bytes) 100 200 300 400 Start time 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8

Bandwidth on each link must be set to the value that guarantees maximum link utilization and no packet losses. Include the script code in your report and justify your choice of the link bandwidth.

Using random sources and plotting results

You are now required to read section VIII of the tutorial and run the proposed script. Pay attention to how you can dene an ON/OFF source with exponential random ON and OFF periods. Pay attention also to the way an OTcl procedure can be dened and called, how numeric expressions are evaluated with the expr command and how you can collect data and write them to a text le. The tutorial script generates output text les with the measured bandwidth as a function of the time in two-column format. This is a general format that can be used with xgraph but also with gnuplot, excel and other software to generate charts, so you can use the one you like.

Question 3 - Report about the simulation you ran and show and comment the graph obtained. Change the frequency at which the script updates the output les by setting the time parameter in the record procedure to 2, 1, 0.5 and 0.1. Show the corresponding graphs obtained and add your comments. You may have noticed that running the simulation script multiple times always gives the same result. This is because ns2 generates random variables with a predetermined seed, causing the same series of events to happen. This behavior can be changed by seeding the random number generator in a dierent way. Add the following line at the beginning of the simulation script, immediately after the new simulator object declaration: global defaultRNG $defaultRNG seed NEW_SEED where NEW SEED is an integer. If NEW SEED is set to zero, the actual seed is not xed and is set to a value that depends on the current system time. Run at least 5 dierent simulations with dierent seeds and show the graphs obtained. Add your comments. For further details on the random number generator used in ns2, refer to section 25.1 of the ns2 manual at http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/doc/node266.html

Dealing with the bandwidth-delay tradeo

Refer to section 6 of the ns2 manual (http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/doc) for a description of the link characteristics and to section 38.3 for trac source characteristics. Now simulate a simplex link between two nodes, source and destination. The distance between the nodes is 3,000 miles and the signal propagates at the speed of light. The source is a CBR over UDP source, sending a single packet of size 62,500 bytes (you need to set the maxpkts source parameter to limit the number of packets generated). Since the default UDP maximum segment size is 1000 bytes, you need also to set the packetSize parameter of the UDP agent to something greater than 62,500 bytes, e.g. 64 kbytes. Refer to section 33 of the ns2 manual for details about UDP agents. The destination is a LossMonitor sink that allows to measure also the time the last packet was received through the lastPktTime state variable. Refer to section 10.8 of the ns2 manual for details about LossMonitor agents. The simulation script must write, either to a le or to the standard output, the link bandwidth, the propagation delay, the packet transmission time, the time the packet was receiced by the LossMonitor sink, the resulting a parameter. Run simulations for dierent values of the link bandwidth in the range where the a parameter (a = 5LC/D) goes from 0.03 to 1.5. Question 4 - Compute the critical bandwidth of the link and plot the propagation delay, the packet transmission time and the time the packet was receiced by the LossMonitor sink as a function of the link bandwidth, using the results from the simulation script. Add your comments and include the script code in your report.

Sharing bandwidth and monitoring queues

In ns2 a generic link from node Ni to node Nj is equipped with a limited queue, whose maximum size defaults to 50 packets. It is possible to modify the queue maximum size within a script with the following command

$ns queue-limit $ni $nj QUEUE_SIZE ns2 also provides queue monitor objects that allow the user to monitor what is going on in a queue between two nodes. Arrivals, departures, drops and queue size in terms of packets and bytes can be monitored with this object. A queue monitor object named queue mon may be dened as set queue_mon [$ns monitor-queue $ni $nj [open queue.tr w]] A queue monitor integrator is an object that computes the integral of the monitored queue size, either in bytes or packets, and it is useful to monitor the queue status. Such an object for the queue monitor dened above may be dened as set queue_pint [$queue_mon get-pkts-integrator] set queue_bint [$queue_mon get-bytes-integrator] Further information on queues, queue monitors and related parameters is available on section 7.3 of the ns2 manual. You are now required to download and check the OTcl script named queue.tcl from the course web page and answer the following questions. Question 5 - Before running the simulation script, draw the topology dened, including sources and sinks. Then describe what the simulation script actually does. Question 6 - Run ve dierent simulations where the additional source attached to node 6 is a CBR source generating 500-byte packets at 100, 125, 200, 300 and 500 kbps. Queue limit on link 2 3 must be set to 30 packets. Using the output le produced by the simulation, plot the bandwidth actually used by the three sources, the packet drop rate and the queue size at the monitored queue as a function of the simulation time. Use the instantaneous values provided by the simulation script, computed as short-term averages over each record interval. Include the ve graphs in your report and add you comments. Question 7 - Now run a number of dierent simulations, setting the additional CBR source rate to 125 kbps and increasing the queue limit on link 2 3 by steps of 50 packets starting from 50. Explain when and why you can stop increasing the queue limit. Show the graphs and add your comments. Question 8 - Run more simulations choosing as the additional source an exponential ON/OFF source rst, and then an aggregate of 10 Pareto ON/OFF sources. Set the peak rate to 125 kbps, the packet size to 500 bytes, the ON and OFF average periods to 0.4s and 0.1s respectively, the shape parameter of the Pareto sources to 1.2 and the queue limit on link 2 3 to 200 packets. Set the source starting and ending transmission times to 0 and 100 respectively. Run several simulations and compare the average queue size obtained.