23.1 Behavior

The Emu net device allows a simulation node to send and receive packets over a real network. The emulated net device relies on a specified interface being in promiscuous mode. It opens a raw socket and binds to that interface. We perform MAC spoofing to separate simulation network traffic from other network traffic that may be flowing to and from the host.

One can use the Emu net device in a testbed situation where the host on which the simulation is running has a specific interface of interest which drives the testbed hardware. You would also need to set this specific interface into promiscuous mode and provide an appropriate device name to the ns-3 emulated net device. An example of this environment is the ORBIT testbed as described above.

The Emu net device only works if the underlying interface is up and in promiscuous mode. Packets will be sent out over the device, but we use MAC spoofing. The MAC addresses will be generated (by default) using the Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI) 00:00:00 as a base. This vendor code is not assigned to any organization and so should not conflict with any real hardware.

It is always up to the user to determine that using these MAC addresses is okay on your network and won’t conflict with anything else (including another simulation using Emu devices) on your network. If you are using the emulated net device in separate simulations you must consider global MAC address assignment issues and ensure that MAC addresses are unique across all simulations. The emulated net device respects the MAC address provided in the SetAddress method so you can do this manually. For larger simulations, you may want to set the OUI in the MAC address allocation function.

IP addresses corresponding to the emulated net devices are the addresses generated in the simulation, which are generated in the usual way via helper functions. Since we are using MAC spoofing, there will not be a conflict between ns-3 network stacks and any native network stacks.

The emulated net device comes with a helper function as all ns-3 devices do. One unique aspect is that there is no channel associated with the underlying medium. We really have no idea what this external medium is, and so have not made an effort to model it abstractly. The primary thing to be aware of is the implication this has for IPv4 global routing. The global router module attempts to walk the channels looking for adjacent networks. Since there is no channel, the global router will be unable to do this and you must then use a dynamic routing protocol such as OLSR to include routing in Emu-based networks.

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