Interactive parallel simulations with the Jane framework

Three important practical issues in fostering the widespread use of parallel simulation technology are the availability of graphical user interfaces, accessibility to parallel computing resources, and facilities for collaborating in the execution of simulations. First, graphical user interfaces must be available to support the various phases of the modeling and simulation process. Secondly, potential users who may not have the necessary parallel computing resources locally must be able to remotely access those resources elsewhere. Finally, collaborative simulations are important because expert modelers are often not parallel simulation experts (and vice versa), and they may be geographically separated from one another. The availability of sophisticated graphical interface development languages and environments, coupled with the advent of universal accessibility via the Internet, makes it easier to address these issues. As part of our projects in high-performance telecommunication network simulation and in distributed federated simulations, we are developing a simulatorneutral interactive simulation framework, called Jane. Jane is intended to help users to remotely and collaboratively interact with parallel simulations over the Internet, and to help them view their own modelspecific run-time animations. We document architectural details of the Jane framework, along with the issues and challenges that we faced in designing and implementing interactivity features in the framework, specifically in the context of our optimistic parallel simulator, GTW (Georgia Tech Time Warp), and the telecommunication modeling language, TeD.