Network simulation
lastmod 2025-12-08created 2019-10-1615 edits
Network simulation means virtually implementing a real network environment in software and running simulations with it. In other words, by virtually implementing software models of links, nodes, and equipment in software, just as one would configure real equipment, it offers a great advantage: tasks that are hard to perform in reality, such as testing new services, administrative work like changing network configuration, and going further, performance testing of protocols that incorporate new ideas, can be carried out without the burden of risk. However, since this is only ever a simulation, accurate collection of environment data and implementation of the model are essential to produce results close to real situations. The lower the accuracy of this data and the implemented model, the more the simulation data loses its reliability. No matter how good the input data is or how thoroughly the output is analyzed, if the model under test is unreliable, the simulation becomes a meaningless exercise. Therefore, people who build simulation models must put a great deal of effort into building reliable models.
Network simulation languages
Once a simulation model is built, the next step is to run it on a computer. To run it on a computer, a program must be written. Many tools that help with writing such programs are available as free or commercial software. Researchers have built their own simulation environments to verify the theories they proposed, and companies that make simulation languages also build and sell simulation languages with powerful graphical environments. The following is a list of the most widely used network simulation languages today.
List of Network Simulators and Emulators
This is a list of open-source network simulators and network emulators that run on Linux or BSD. Please post a comment on this page to let me know about any other open-source network simulation tools I did not include in this list.
- Antidote (NRE Labs) - https://antidoteproject.readthedocs.io/en/latest
- Cloonix - http://clownix.net
- CORE - http://cs.itd.nrl.navy.mil/work/core/index.php
- EVE-NG - https://www.eve-ng.net/community/
- GNS3 - http://www.gns3.com
- IMUNES - http://www.imunes.net or https://github.com/imunes
- Kathara - http://www.kathara.org/
- Mininet - http://www.mininet.org
- NS-3 - https://www.nsnam.org/
- Shadow - https://shadow.github.io/
- VNX and VNUML - http://www.dit.upm.es/vnx
- vrnetlab - https://github.com/plajjan/vrnetlab
- Wistar - hhttps://github.com/Juniper/wistar
- Cisco Packet Tracer
See also
- Wireshark
- pcap
- tcpdump
- scapy
- tcpreplay - Pcap editing and replaying utilities
- WireMock - flexible, open source API mocking
- tc (Traffic Control) - Part of the iproute2 package.
Favorite site
- Wikipedia (en) Network simulation
- Kim Soon-sik's IT/Information Technology - The concept of network simulation
- [Recommended] Tools - The Wireshark Wiki - This is a place for scripts and tools related to Wireshark / TShark that users may like to share, and for links to related NetworkTroubleshooting tools.