FlexiSim: A user friendly Environment for Network Simulations

NS2 is a discrete event simulator targeted at networking research. NS2 provides substantial support for simulation of routing protocols over wired and wireless (local and satellite) networks. NS2 uses TCL script for its front end and C++ as its back end [1,5]. NS2 is completely command based and one needs to create a TCL file for running any network simulation. Therefore, it’s very tedious for a user to go through all the syntaxes and semantics of the required commands. This paper presents the development of a new graphical network simulator named FlexiSim which is based on NS2 [1]. Additionally, in this paper we discuss the design of FlexiSim and the implementation of a routing protocol through it. FlexiSim remarkably simplifies the procedure involved in running the simulations on NS2, by providing an interactive and flexible environment to the user therefore making it user friendly. No simulator existed for the code generation of NS2 prior to the design of FlexiSim. The most important advantage of FlexiSim is that it is a simple simulator that can be used for performing simulation exercises of moderate complexity under realistic network characteristics.