OverSim Features

On this page we'll present some of the available and planned features of OverSim soon.

For now this is a list of requirements we think a modern overlay networks simulator should fulfill:

• Statistics: The simulator should be able to collect statistical data such as sent, received, or forwarded network traffic per node, successful or unsuccessful packet delivery, and packet hop count. The output needs to be in a format that is easy to postprocess e.g. for generating gnuplot output.

• Underlying Network Modelling: There should be a flexible underlying network scheme, which on the one hand provides a fully configurable network topology with realistic bandwidths, packet delays, and packet losses, and on the other hand a fast and simple alternative model for high simulation performance. All necessary specifications should be placed as parameters in configuration files in a human readable form.

• Scalability: The simulator should be able to run huge simulations in real-time with at least 10.000 nodes. In these cases a GUI is useless and needs to be detachable for higher performance.

• Reuse of simulation code: The different implementations of overlay protocols should be reusable for real network applications, so that researchers can validate the simulator framework results by comparing them to the results from real-world test networks like ​PlanetLab. Therefore, the simulation framework should be able to handle and assemble real network packets and to communicate with other implementations of the same overlay protocol.

• Flexibility: The simulator should facilitate both structured and unstructured overlay network simulations. The user should be able to specify a large number of parameters. The simulator should also be able to provide node mobility and node failure, as well as malicious behavior of nodes.

• Documentation: For using and extending the simulator with e.g. new overlay protocols, there should be a comprehensive user manual. The source code and the API has to be well documented.

• Interactive Visualizer: In order to validate and debug new or existing overlay protocols there should be a GUI, which visualizes both the topology of the underlying network and the overlay topology in a customizable way.