floodns: temporal routed flow simulation

This is a flow-level simulator to simulate routed flows over time. The abstraction is between a flow optimization (e.g., via a linear program) and a packet-level simulation (e.g., ns-3). It does not model packets, but it calculates the rate of flows over time.

As a consequence, simulating large flows is generally quicker because the runtime is determined by the calculation of rate assignment rather than individual packet interactions as is the case for packet-level simulation. On the other side, this means that because packets are not modeled, (a) latency, (b) queueing, and (c) end-point congestion control cannot be directly modeled. Additionally, because flows must be routed along acyclic paths in the current model abstraction, you cannot apply perfect-split traffic engineering.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. (see also the MIT License in ./LICENSE).

Overview

Requirements

• Java 7 or higher (check: java -version)

• Maven 3 or higher (check: mvn --version)

• Python 3.7 or higher (check: python --version)

• Gnuplot 4.4 or higher (check: gnuplot --version)

• OR-tools and ortoolslpparser to solve linear programs from file:

  pip install ortools
  pip install git+https://github.com/snkas/python-ortools-lp-parser

• To use the analysis functionality you need the numpy and exputil Python package:

  pip install numpy
  pip install git+https://github.com/snkas/exputilpy

Building

1. Go to the simulator folder: cd simulator

2. Build basic simulation executable jar:

   mvn clean compile assembly:single
   mv target/floodns-*-jar-with-dependencies.jar floodns-basic-sim.jar
   

3. Install in your system's maven repository:

   mvn source:jar javadoc:jar install
   

Getting started

There are two possible ways to get started:

(A) Basic simulation which limits you to a simple static topology and a simple flow arrival schedule. You only have to generate simple intuitive files to use the simulator. Please follow the tutorial doc/tutorial_basic_sim.md

(B) Programmatically make use of floodns yourself and extend it to fit your particular use case. Basic simulation is still a good example of good experimental practice and separation of concerns. Please follow the tutorial doc/tutorial_code_yourself.md

Beyond that, there is further documentation found in doc/, including:

• An overview of the entire framework: doc/framework.md

Testing

Run all tests:

cd simulator
mvn test

Coverage report can be found in: target/site/jacoco