1. Introduction

Let's start at the very beginning,
a very nice place to start,
when you sing, you begin with A, B, C,
when you simulate, you begin with the topology,1.1
...

This document (ns Notes and Documentation) provides reference documentation for ns. Although we begin with a simple simulation script, resources like Marc Greis's tutorial web pages (originally at his web site, now at http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/tutorial/) or the slides from one of the ns tutorials are problably better places to begin for the ns novice.

We first begin by showing a simple simulation script. This script is also available in the sources in ~ns/tcl/ex/simple.tcl.

This script defines a simple topology of four nodes, and two agents, a UDP agent with a CBR traffic generator, and a TCP agent. The simulation runs for $3s$. The output is two trace files, out.tr and out.nam. When the simulation completes at the end of $3s$, it will attempt to run a nam visualisation of the simulation on your screen.

# The preamble
set ns [new Simulator]			# initialise the simulation;

# Predefine tracing
set f [open out.tr w]
$ns trace-all $f
set nf [open out.nam w]
$ns namtrace-all $nf

\clearpage
# so, we lied.  now, we define the topology
#
#       n0
#         \bs
#      5Mb \bs
#      2ms  \bs
#            \bs
#             n2 --------- n3
#            /     1.5Mb
#      5Mb  /       10ms
#      2ms /
#         /
#       n1
#
set n0 [$ns node]
set n1 [$ns node]
set n2 [$ns node]
set n3 [$ns node]

$ns duplex-link $n0 $n2 5Mb 2ms DropTail
$ns duplex-link $n1 $n2 5Mb 2ms DropTail
$ns duplex-link $n2 $n3 1.5Mb 10ms DropTail

# Some agents.
set udp0 [new Agent/UDP]		# A UDP agent;
$ns attach-agent $n0 $udp0		# on node $n0;
set cbr0 [new Application/Traffic/CBR]		# A CBR traffic generator agent;
$cbr0 attach-agent $udp0		# attached to the UDP agent;
$udp0 set class_ 0			# actually, the default, but\ldots;

set null0 [new Agent/Null]		# Its sink;
$ns attach-agent $n3 $null0		# on node $n3;

$ns connect $udp0 $null0
$ns at 1.0 "$cbr0 start"

puts [$cbr0 set packetSize_]
puts [$cbr0 set interval_]

# A FTP over TCP/Tahoe from $n1 to $n3, flowid 2
set tcp [new Agent/TCP]
$tcp set class_ 1
$ns attach-agent $n1 $tcp

set sink [new Agent/TCPSink]
$ns attach-agent $n3 $sink

set ftp [new Application/FTP]	# TCP does not generate its own traffic;
$ftp attach-agent $tcp
$ns at 1.2 "$ftp start"

$ns connect $tcp $sink
$ns at 1.35 "$ns detach-agent $n0 $tcp ; $ns detach-agent $n3 $sink"

\clearpage
# The simulation runs for \(3s\).
# The simulation comes to an end when the scheduler invokes the finish{} procedure below.
# This procedure closes all trace files, and invokes nam visualization on one of the trace files.

$ns at 3.0 "finish"
proc finish {} {
        global ns f nf
        $ns flush-trace
        close $f
        close $nf

        puts "running nam..."
        exec nam out.nam &
        exit 0
}

# Finally, start the simulation.
$ns run

Tom Henderson 2011-11-05