[Ns-developers] upcoming roadmap for ns-2

[Tom Henderson]

I would like to suggest the following next steps for ns-2.

1) validation.  All of our validation tests pass on Linux i386 machines, 
but many are not portable and have had portability problems for years. 
Some seem beyond an easy portability fix.  Rather than remove the 
non-portable ones, I propose to split the validation script into two: a 
"portable" and "non-portable" one.  Both sets should pass on Linux i386, 
gcc-4.  The portable set should pass on x86-64, ppc, Cygwin, etc.  The 
validation script can then print out a disclaimer such as:  "The 
following tests validate in many Linux i386 environments, but are known 
to have portability problems; see (webpage).  Errors in these tests are 
not necessarily a problem with your simulator."

2) 802.11 updates:  active and passive scanning

Ilango Purushothaman has previously posted some patches for 802.11 
infrastructure extensions.  Here are the latest revisions:

http://www.ee.washington.edu/research/funlab/802_11/Beacon-Assoc_release/80211-patch
http://www.ee.washington.edu/research/funlab/802_11/Beacon-Assoc_release/report_80211.pdf

Barring further comment on the above, I propose that we accept the above 
patch to the ns-2.32 release.  I know that several groups are working on 
various 802.11 improvements; please propose to this list if you would 
like your code to be considered for a future release.

3) Lloyd Wood has suggested to incorporate Pedro Estrela's ns Tk 
patches, and I'll work on that before the next release.

ns-2.32 proposed release schedule:

release candidates for test:  ~August 10
ns-2.32 release:  week of August 20

Beyond this release, I am interested in shepherding in some additional
code from outside groups.  I know of groups using the following 
emulation patch, for instance:
http://www-ivs.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/EuK/forschung/projekte/nse/index.shtml
There have also been posts recently of other modules, such as the 
dynamic libraries patch.  Please let me know if you would like to assist 
in bringing in some of this outside work into the main distribution.

Tom