This tutorial introduces an open-source and platform-agnostic network co-simulation tool – NSB, the Network Simulation Bridge – to the distributed computing developer and researcher communities to allow for easier integration of network simulations into their existing applications and systems. It is motivated by the increasing importance of modeling and simulating underlying networks in an increasingly interconnected world where connected devices have become ubiquitous and the remote and distributed tools and services accessed on these devices have become pervasive.
The tutorial opens with an overview discussion of the design and specifications of NSB and its features and packages before walking through its implementation and usage with two well-known network simulators – OMNeT++ and ns-3. The hands-on parts of this tutorial involve live and interactive demonstrations of these implementations, followed by step-by-step instructions and explanations as we guide participants through the usage of NSB’s high level packages and implementation of NSB’s low-level API with different network simulators and use cases. Throughout this tutorial and beyond, we invite developers and researchers in the distributed computing communities to collaborate and leverage NSB in their own works and contribute improvements and new ideas to the development of NSB.