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On this page, we will try to maintain pointers to current ns-3 development work, and post some suggested project ideas.

If you are interested in collaborating on one of these projects, please do not hesitate to contact the individuals identified.

Note: Several ns-3 developers hang out on IRC at #ns-3 at irc.freenode.net. A typically active time is around 1500 to 1900 UTC, Mondays through Fridays.

Developer home pages

Here are some developer pages, to see what people are currently working on:

• Raj B.
• Tomh
• craigdo

Current Development Projects

Below is a list of projects that are being worked on and have been publicly announced. Please add your project to the below so interested contributors can coordinate with you.

802.11 model extensions

There are several efforts ongoing to extend the ns-3 Wifi model.

Port of ns-2 802.11 Ext models

• summary: ns-2.33 added a new 802.11 model with much more detailed channel modeling. An effort has been started to port over reusable components from that implementation to ns-3's Wifi model. The main additions are currently in the area of 802.11e (QoS, EDCA) and physical layer models (capture effects, user-definable coding rates) supporting vehicular networks.
• ns-developers post: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-November/004936.html
• code location: http://idlebox.net/2008/ns-3-wifi/code/ns-3-wifiex/
• status: under current active development. Time frame till this is completed: 4-5 month.

802.11n

• summary: University of Florence (LART lab) has begun work on an 802.11n model for ns3. The main goal is to simulate the frame aggregation feature. In the future, they aim to implement the High Throughput terminal behaviour with MIMO technology. They plan to add, to ns-3's 802.11 model, the following 802.11n features:
  • Frame Aggregation
  • Block ACK
  • HCF (EDCA and support for HCCA)
  • TXOP
  • HT terminal (also with protection modes)
  • MIMO

Also interested to verify the 11n terminal throughput when are associated terminal of a/b/g standards.

• ns-developers post: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-December/004973.html
• code location: (none posted yet)
• status: just announced

802.11s

• summary: Wireless Software Research & Development Group of Institute of Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences is aiming to make a complete model of IEEE802.11s D2.0 Draft Standard.
• ns-developers post: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-November/004931.html
• code location: (none posted yet)
• status: just announced

Synchronous posix/sockets API

• summary: An ns-3 "process" environment
• ns-developers post: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-April/003912.html
• code location: http://code.nsnam.org/mathieu/ns-3-simu
• status: likely for ns-3.4 or ns-3.5 merge; being worked also with the application integration project below

802.21 media independent handover

• wiki page: http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/NS-3_MIH_implementation
• code location: http://code.nsnam.org/salumu/ns-3-mih/
• status: Under active development.

IPv6 for ns-3

• summary: Ipv6 support for ns-3
• ns-developers post: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-June/004283.html
• code location: hg clone https://svnet.u-strasbg.fr/hg/ns-3-ipv6/
• status: ns-3.3 contains the first merge (Ipv6Address) of this code. ns-3.4 will continue to add features, including Ipv6Interface class. Here is a (somewhat dated) roadmap: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-July/004358.html

WiMAX module

• ns-developers post: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-September/004789.html
• code location: http://code.nsnam.org/iamine/ns-3-wimax
• status: Not yet reviewed.

Underwater acoustic model

• ns-developers post: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-October/004826.html
• code location: http://freehg.org/u/ltracy/ns3-uan
• status: Not yet reviewed. Proposed for ns-3.4.

Ipv4 API, routing, cleanup

• ns-developers post: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-July/004462.html
• wiki page: IPv4 cleanup
• code location: http://code.nsnam.org/tomh/ns-3-ip
• status: bumped to ns-3.4.

ns-3 Emulation and Realtime Scheduler

In this context, emulation means the ability to arange for the simulator to generate and consume data from the network in real time. There are two main pieces to this effort: a realtime simulator scheduler and prototypical net devices that allow connection to real system hardware.

• summary: Add support for various forms of emulation
• wiki page: Emulation and Realtime Scheduler
• status: The realtime scheduler is in ns-3.2. The emulation portion (emulated NetDevice) has been merged into ns-3-dev for the ns-3.3 release. This code was demoed at Sigcomm. For ns-3.4, the plan is to add support for a tap device.

Visualization for ns-3

Jeremy Norman and the iNSpect team have posted some plans for a visualization library for ns-3:

• http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-March/003777.html
• http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-November/004914.html

Gustavo Carneiro is working on a Python visualization tool (http://code.nsnam.org/gjc/ns-3-pyviz)

real-world application integration

• summary: port of quagga routing to ns-3
• wiki page: http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/Real_World_Application_Integration
• code location: http://code.nsnam.org/lj/quagga-porting/
• status: Being developed by Liu Jian, Google Summer of Code. Portions of this code are planned for ns-3.3.

Statistics for ns-3

• summary: statistical framework for ns-3
• wiki page: http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/Statistical_Framework_for_Network_Simulation
• code location: http://code.nsnam.org/tjkopena/ns-3-stat/
• status: Merged to src/contrib for ns-3.2. We are seeking user feedback on this feature.

Tag rework

• ns-developers post: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-July/004447.html
• status: Priority for ns-3.3 merge.

Parallel simulations

• summary: ns-3 extensions for parallelization
• wiki page: http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/Parallel_Simulations
• code location: http://code.nsnam.org/pfeifer/ns-3-para/
• status: dormant since 2008 Google Summer of Code

Delay Box for ns-3

Matt Crinklaw is working on a port of ns-2 DelayBox to ns-3.

• summary: http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/doc/node247.html (from ns-2 documentation)
• code location: http://freehg.org/u/mlaw
• status: No status update recently. Dormant.

Suggested Projects

2008 Google Summer of Code Project Ideas

We have posted some project ideas for Google Summer of Code. Three of these have been picked up (see above) but others are candidates for future work.

Event Scheduler

• Implement a "Calendar Queue" event scheduler. The reference paper is: Randy Brown, Calendar Queues: A Fast 0(1) Priority Queue Implementation for the Simulation Event Set Problem, CACM, 31(10):1220-1227, October 1988.

• Implement a "Dynamic Calendar Queue" event scheduler. The reference paper is: JongSuk Ahn, SeungHyun Oh, "Dynamic Calendar Queue," ss, p. 20, Thirty-Second Annual Simulation Symposium, 1999.

Ns3 Wireless PHY

This project aims at building a high-quality set of PHY-level models for wireless networks: Ns3WirelessPhy

Traffic generation applications

George Riley (riley@ece.gatech.edu) is overseeing the porting of application models from GTNetS to ns-3.

Wireless routing protocol infrastructure

Wireless routing protocol infrastructure for mobile wireless networks. Contact: Mathieu Lacage (mathieu.lacage@sophia.inria.fr)

Removing traffic generation from applications class

1. • summary: Proposed decoupling to generalize applications
   • ns-developers post: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2007-July/003136.html
   • code location: http://code.nsnam.org/laprisee/ns-3-mp/
   • status: Was under discussion in the summer.