Large-scale network simulation: how big? how fast?

Abstract

Parallel and distributed simulation tools are emerging that offer the ability to perform detailed, packet-level simulations of large-scale computer networks on an unprecedented scale. The state-of-the-art in large-scale network simulation is characterized quantitatively. For this purpose, a metric based on the number of packet transmissions that can be processed by a simulator per second of wallclock time (PTS) is used as a means to quantitatively assess packet-level network simulator performance. An approach to realizing scalable network simulations that leverages existing sequential simulation models and software is described. Results from a recent performance study are presented concerning large-scale network simulation on a variety of platforms ranging from workstations to cluster computers to supercomputers. These experiments include runs utilizing as many as 1536 processors yielding performance as high as 106 million PTS. The performance of packet-level simulations of web and ftp traffic, and denial of service attacks on networks containing millions of network nodes are briefly described, including a run demonstrating the ability to simulate a million web traffic flows in near real-time. New opportunities and research challenges to fully exploit this capability are discussed.