[Ns-developers] Emulated and Tap Net Devices (ns-3.3 new features)

[craigdo@ee.washington.edu]

Dear all,

As some of you may know, there has been some work done to get some new use
scenarios supported in ns-3.  I have put together a real-time simulator
(which is already merged) to support these new scenarios.

There are two feature additions for ns-3.3 that are going to me merged in
the next week that enable two of the desired scenarios:

1) An "emulated" net device.  This device allows an ns-3 node with its
associated protocol suite to drive real devices and talk over real networks.

2) A "tap" net device.  This device allows the computer hosting a simulation
(Linux) with its associated protocol suite to appear as a node in a
simulation.

Since these are self-contained devices with helpers that require no API
changes, there is really no "official" need for a design review; however, I
am providing a repository with these two devices' implementations in case
anyone has any comments.  You can find them in

http://code.nsnam.org/craigdo/ns-3-emutap/

in the src/devices/emulated and src/devices/tap directories.

There is a clear and pressing need for better documentation which I am
addressing now.  I may push the devices before the documentation process is
done, but I will certainly address this for ns-3.3.  I will also finish up
an emu-manager and emu-manager-client to deal with the suid root
requirements in a method similar to the tap device (see man cmsg for
details).  However, the basic devices are there for your perusal.

As I said, I expect to merge these puppies into ns-3-dev during "merge week"
(next week -- see http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/Ns-3.3)

Regards,

-- Craig