Fast Network Simulation Setup (FNSS)

Fast Network Simulation Setup (FNSS) is a toolchain allowing network researchers and engineers to simplify the process of setting up a network experiment scenario. It allows users to:

• Parse a topology from a dataset or a topology generator or generate it according to a number of synthetic models
• Configure links with capacity, weights, delays and buffer sizes
• Deploy applications and protocol stacks on nodes
• Generate traffic matrices
• Generate event schedules
• Deploy network and workload configuration to a number of simulators and emulators

FNSS comprises a core library (written in Python) and a set of adapters. The core library provides all capabilities for generating the experiment scenario. The adapters allow users to export scenarios generated with the core library to ns-2, ns-3, Mininet, Omnet++, Autonetkit and jFed as well other simulators or emulators through the Python core library itself or the provided Java and C++ libraries.

Project directory structure

The project files are organized in the following directories:

• core: core Python library
• cpp: C++ API
• java: Java API
• ns3: ns-3 API

How to use it

The FNSS library comprises a core Python library, which also includes adapters for ns-2, Mininet and Autonetkit and libraries for ns-3 and Java and C++ simulators/emulators. The core Python library is needed for creating and configuring topologies, traffic matrices and event schedules. Such objects can then be used directly if you intend to use a Python simulator. Otherwise, they can be exported to ns-2, Autonetkit and Mininet or saved to XML files which can then be parsed by the ns-3, Java or C++ libraries. For detailed information on how to use each component of the toolchain, please refer to the instructions included in the README files contained in the root directory of each subcomponent (core, cpp, java and ns3) or visit the FNSS website.

License

The core (Python), Java and C++ libraries are licensed under the term of BSD License. The ns-3 API is instead licensed under the terms of the GNU GPLv2 license.

Citing

If you cite FNSS in your paper, please refer to the following pubblication:

L. Saino, C. Cocora, G. Pavlou, A Toolchain for Simplifying Network Simulation Setup, in Proceedings of the 6th International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques (SIMUTOOLS '13), Cannes, France, March 2013

@inproceedings{fnss,
     author = {Saino, Lorenzo and Cocora, Cosmin and Pavlou, George},
     title = {A Toolchain for Simplifying Network Simulation Setup},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 6th International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques},
     series = {SIMUTOOLS '13},
     year = {2013},
     location = {Cannes, France},
     numpages = {10},
     publisher = {ICST},
     address = {ICST, Brussels, Belgium, Belgium},
}

Bug reports

If you wish to report a bug, please open an issue on the GitHub issue page. When reporting an issue, please try to provide a reproducible example of the problem, if possible.

Contributions

Any contributions to the project (either bug fixes or new features) are very much welcome. To submit your code, please send a pull request on the GitHub project page.

If you wish to contribute please try to follow these guidelines:

• Write commit messages conforming to Git convention
• If you are sending a fix to an open issue, feel free to send a pull request directly, but make sure to reference the issue ID that you are fixing in the commit message.
• Think about writing test cases for your feature or bug fix, if relevant. If you can't, don't worry: send your code anyway.