COMM3F Network Simulation
(Ian Fletcher & John Tindle).

Ns2 Tutorial
Paul Guy 3rd December 2003

1. Introduction

This paper has been written to give an overview of Network Simulator version 2 (Ns2). Ns is a discrete event simulator that is used by networking research to simulate wired, wireless and satellite networks.

Ns started as a variant of the REAL network simulator in 1989 and has since been supported by the VINT project and others. Ns allows for the simulation of various protocols, applications, routing, queue types etc. A graphical front end has been developed for use with Ns known as network animator (nam). Alternatively trace files can be created for analysis, which can be displayed using Xgraph, Microsoft Excel and many more