Investigation of Network Simulation Tools and Comparison Study: NS3 vs NS2

Establishing and implementation of a whole network in real time scenario is very difficult. It is too much time consuming and costly to deploy a complete test bed component containing multiple networks (computers, routers and data links) to validate and verify a certain network protocol or a specific network algorithm for wired and wireless network. A widespread methodology is used for verifying, testing and analyzing the results of network based on network simulation. A network simulation is a technique where the program models the behavior of a network either by calculating the interaction between the different network entities (hosts, packets, etc.) using mathematical formulas, or actually capturing and playing back observations from a production network. The network simulation is performed by network simulation tool is referred to as network simulator. A network simulator is a piece of software or hardware that predicts the behavior of a network without an actual network being present. During the past years, varieties of network simulation tools have been developed in the field of communication. In this paper, network simulation tools namely NS3, NS2, OMNet++, NetSim, OPNET, REAL, J-Sim, QualNet have been compared and a comparison study between two simulators namely NS3 and NS2 has been conducted. Index Terms – J-Sim, Network Simulator, NetSim, NS2, NS3, OMNet++, OPNET, QuealNet, REAL, Simulation. This paper is presented at International Conference on Recent Trends in Computer and information Technology Research on 25& 26 September (2015) conducted by B. S. Anangpuria Instituteof Technology & Management, Village-Alampur, Ballabgarh-Sohna Road,Faridabad.