[ns] Is this topology too big?

[Jorge Manrique <jorge.manrique@upcnet.es>]

Hi all,

I'm intending to simulate quite a large network. It would have 4 core routers with 100Mbps fully-meshed links. For each core router it would have 3 aggregation routers and for each aggregation router 5 access nodes. That would be 4+12+60=76 nodes. Is that too much for NS?

I think that might be possible. But what I'd really like to do is overload the core routers by using only 250 Kbps to link TCP source nodes to the access nodes (I don't know any other way of limitating the rate of the TCP sources to a specific value, any ideas on that would be greatly appreciated). To generate 150 Mbps towards each core router I would need 150Mbps/250Kbps=600 "ADSL modems" per core router, so 2400 generator nodes in total.

I really think that 2400 are TOO many nodes for NS. Am I right? If so, would the 76 nodes be a reasonable value? (I'm using a Linux Red Hat 6 on a Pentium II using 128 MB of virtual mem). 

Any helps will be greatly appreciated, as it will take me far too much time to generate this topology, specially if I'm not going to be able to make any simulations with it.

Thanks a lot and best regards,

Jorge Manrique
UPC Graduate Student
Spain