[Ns-developers] ns-3 on Windows

[craigdo@ee.washington.edu]

Hi all,

There has been considerable discussion recently about the "official" ns-3
answer to running under Windows.  I have personally been running Cygwin for
years and it does allow me to run a subset of ns-3 fairly well.  Although it
allows me to do some things, other important features like Python bindings,
NSC, emulation devices, tap devices and real-time simulations will not work
under Cygwin.  To use these, I generally ssh from Windows (via Cywgin) into
a grown-up system; but this has its annoyances as well.

We have talked for some time about using virtual machines as an answer to
full-blown ns-3 on Windows; and I have had a HOWTO up on the nsnam wiki for
some time spelling out how to use VMware to get virtual machines running and
configured.  There hasn't been anything available for VirtualBox which seems
to be a more popular choice.

I put together a HOWTO that describes in detail how to use Sun VirtualBox to
get Fedora 11 running and then how to get ns-3 running on that virtual
machine.

For your reading pleasure:

 
http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/HOWTO_use_VirtualBox_to_run_simulations_
on_Windows_machines

It compares surprisingly well, performance-wise, to Cygwin; and it is real
Linux so you get all of the expected bells and whistles (like NSC).

Regards,

-- Craig