Prototyping network architectures on a supercomputer

Outlines a methodology for developing network control systems which allows for an evaluation of the dynamic behavior and overall performance at an early stage of the development process. Our approach is to build a software prototype which is designed according to the architecture under consideration and runs the intended control algorithms. The functional and dynamic properties of this prototype are tested and evaluated on an emulation platform that we built for this purpose. By providing support for real-time visualization and interactive emulation, this platform can be used to study multimedia networks in various scenarios, such as different load patterns, network sizes and management operations. The current implementation runs on a KSR-1 and an SP2 parallel processor, which are connected to a graphics workstation via ATM links. We use the platform in several projects, one of which aims at developing an architecture for managing multimedia network services.