[Ns-developers] ns-3.6 Release Candidate 3 Posted

[craigdo@ee.washington.edu]

Hi All,
 
I'm happy to announce that release candidate number three for ns-3.6
(ns-3.6-RC3) is now available at the below location (via tarball):

  http://www.nsnam.org/releases/ns-allinone-3.6-RC3.tar.bz2

And also (via Mercurial):

  hg clone http://code.nsnam.org/ns-3-allinone
  cd ns-3-allinone
  ./download.py -n ns-3.6-RC3 -r ns-3.6-RC3-ref-traces

This is a release candidate, which means that we believe this version of
ns-3.6 is almost ready for release, but we want to make absolutely sure that
nothing has snuck in that could cause serious problems.  We would appreciate
it if you all could find time to look at this candidate with an eye to
finding problems before we call it "golden."

Please see this "getting started" page if you are new to ns-3:

  http://www.nsnam.org/getting_started.html

>From the RELEASE_NOTES file in the distribution ...

Release 3.6
===========

Availability
------------
This release is immediately available from:

  http://www.nsnam.org/releases/ns-allinone-3.6.tar.bz2

Supported platforms
-------------------
ns-3.6 has been tested on the following platforms:
  - linux x86 gcc 4.2, 4.1, and, 3.4.6.
  - linux x86_64 gcc 4.4.0, 4.3.2, 4.2.3, 4.2.1, 4.1.3, 3.4.6
  - MacOS X ppc and x86 (gcc 4.0.x and 4.2.x)
  - cygwin gcc 3.4.4 (debug only), gcc 4.3.2 (debug and optimized)
  - mingw gcc 3.4.5 (debug only)

Not all ns-3 options are available on all platforms; consult the
wiki for more information:

  http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/Installation

New user-visible features
-------------------------

  a) 802.11 models:
     - Add an implementation of the minstrel rate control algorithm
       (Duy Nguyen for gsoc)
     - AthstatsHelper: enables the wifi device to produce periodic
       reports similar to the ones generated by madwifi's
       athstats tool (Nicola Baldo)
     - 10MHz and 5MHz channel width supported by 802.11a model
       (Ramon Bauza and Kirill Andreev)
     - Channel switching support. YansWifiPhy can now switch among
       different channels (Ramon Bauza and Pavel Boyko)

  b) IPv6 models:
    - IPv6 interface;
    - IPv6 layer;
    - IPv6 raw socket;
    - Static IPv6 routing;
    - ICMPv6 layer;
    - Some ICMPv6 error messages (destination unreachable, ...);
    - Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NS/NA, RS/RA, redirection);
    - Ping6 application (send Echo request);
    - Radvd application (send RA);
    - Examples (ping6, simple-routing-ping6, radvd, radvd-two-prefix,
      icmpv6-redirect).

  c) Wireless Mesh Networking models:
    - General multi-interface mesh stack infrastructure (devices/mesh
module).
    - IEEE 802.11s (Draft 3.0) model including Peering Management Protocol
and HWMP.
    - Forwarding Layer for Meshing (FLAME) protocol.

  d) Nix-vector routing:
    - Ipv4NixVectorHelper
    - Examples (nix-simple, nms-p2p-nix)

  e) New Test Framework
    - Use test.py instead of ./waf check or ./waf --regression
    - Previous unit tests have been ported to new framework.
    - Examples are tested for run-ability.

  f) A new Flow Monitor module
   - To very easily measure flow metrics in a simulation
   - No need to use trace callbacks or parsing trace files

API changes from ns-3.5
-----------------------
API changes for this release are documented in the file CHANGES.html of the
distribution.

Known issues
------------
ns-3.6-RC3 build is known to fail on the following platforms:
  - gcc 3.3 and earlier
  - optimized builds on gcc 3.4.4 and 3.4.5
  - optimized builds on linux x86 gcc 4.0.x
  - MinGW.

Regards,

-- Craig