Comparison on Network Simulation Techniques

Network simulation is an important technique for verifying new algorithms, analyzing network performance and deploying the practical networks. Different network simulation softwares are applied for different scenarios. In this paper, their performance in different applications are discussed in detail. Three kinds of main network simulation softwares are introduced in this paper: OPNET, Network Simulator (NS) and Objective Modular Network Testbed in C++ (OMNeT++). NS is widely used in network research. How to apply NS in network traffic analysis is discussed in this paper.