Revision as of 23:15, 8 December 2010

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.

Much of the current activity is centered around the current release, which is now ns-3.10 due in early 2011. The release page should list code that is under active review for merging: ns-3.10 release page

If you are new to ns-3 and want to contribute, please read these guidelines: Contributing to ns-3 and review the information on this page below.

Note: ns-3 developers sometimes hang out on IRC at #ns-3 at irc.freenode.net.

We conduct many of our reviews at http://codereview.appspot.com.

Reviews requested for ns-3 merge

The ns-3.10 release page has the most recent list of things under review for merge.

NSF Frameworks for ns-3 project

A multi-year project funded by NSF to improve usability of ns-3. Please see NSF_Frameworks page.

Publicly announced development projects

ns-3 core

Multi-threaded simulation implementation for multicore

• ns-developers post: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2009-July/006197.html
• code location: http://code.nsnam.org/guillaume/ns-3-multithreading/
• status: ns-3.10 merge?

Synchronized emulation

• code location: http://www.comsys.rwth-aachen.de/projects/slicetime/
• background: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2010-November/008488.html
• status: announced in Nov. 2010

Linux namespaces and ns-3

• summary: Tom Goff has contributed code and documentation about how to use ns-3 with Linux namespaces.
• code location: See the below wiki page.
• background: http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/HOWTO_use_Linux_namespaces_with_ns-3
• status: Working on integration of this capability with the CORE network emulator. Some form of this will likely be merged with ns-3 and CORE in the future.

Device and channel models

Miscellaneous wifi enhancements

• code location: http://codereview.appspot.com/65051
• reviewer(s): Mathieu Lacage
• status: Some of these pieces made it into ns-3.5-- others are pending
• background: http://groups.google.com/group/ns-3-reviews/browse_thread/thread/f0b36d7373421a7d#

Patch to pause and resume an interface

• code location: http://codereview.appspot.com/62054
• reviewer(s): TBD
• status:

802.11 model extensions

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

Harmonization with 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, while reusing already implemented basic components. The goal is a harmonization of the 802.11 models of ns-2 and ns-3. Leading aim is to support research on vehicular networks. Planned near-term features:
  • Equalizing PHY models including capture effects, user-definable coding rates (e.g. 5.9 GHz from 802.11p)
  • EDCA QoS extensions of 802.11e
• Already finished features:
  • Nakagami/Rayleigh propagation loss model
• 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.

• Already finished features (in ns-3.5):
  • HCF, TXOP, Frame Aggregation
• Merged for ns-3.8:
  • Block ACK
• code location: http://code.nsnam.org/mirko/ns-3-80211n
• status: Frame aggregation and block ack merged already; Tommaso Pecorella announced his lab's next steps here

Wireless Interference (Jamming) Model

• summary: Network Security Lab (NSL), University of Washington, Seattle has begun work on a wireless interference (jamming) model for ns3. The goal is to to enable researchers to use ns3 to study jamming and its mitigation methods.
• wiki page: http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/NS-3_wireless_jamming_model
• code location: http://codereview.appspot.com/1055041/show
• status: Public review.

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET)

• summary: Michele Weigle's group is working on VANET and has posted a patch for review in the past, but has taken it off the table for ns-3 merge consideration until more work is done.
• code location: None publicly posted at this time.

ns-3, 802.15.4 + 6LoWPAN

• status: Tommaso Pecorella announced his plans here

LTE

Several developers expressed their interest in enhancing the LTE code developed within the GSoC 2010:

• Nicola Baldo and Marco Miozzo (CTTC) announced to be working on the following:
  • adding UL link adaptation
  • modeling inter-cell interference
  • reworking the RRM/scheduling API
• Leo Razoumov announced possible interest in the following contributions:
  • MIMO
  • PHY model abstractions
  • scheduling models
  • mobility and traffic models
• Giuseppe Piro and his group (DEE, Politecnico di Bari) announced the intent to continue with the development of the LTE module, focusing mainly on the following MAC layer aspects:
  • RRM
  • scheduling
  • AMC
• Marco Mezzavilla and his group (DEI, University of Padova) announced interest in working on the following:
  • MAC layer
  • mobility
  • traffic modelization
  • MIMO

Link layer

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: Dormant-- no merge plans announced.

MPLS

• Submitted by: Andrey Churin
• code location: http://code.google.com/p/ns-3-shop/
• reviewer(s): None
• status: Project has moved to Google hosting.

Network layer

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-ipv6-2nd/
• status: ns-3.3 contains the first merge (Ipv6Address) of this code. ns-3.7 and ns-3.8 will continue to add features. Here is a tentative roadmap: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2009-July/006211.html

API and functionality for marking TOS bytes in packets

• Submitted by: Antti Makela
• code location: http://www.nsnam.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=897
• reviewer(s): None
• status: Need to consider whether this fits into the Linux netfilter support that is planned

DSR routing

• Submitted by: Yufei Cheng
• status: Announced here: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2010-December/008496.html

DSDV routing

• Submitted by: Hemanth Narra
• code location: http://codereview.appspot.com/1668042/show
• status: Announced here: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2010-December/008496.html

Transport layer

TCP Vegas

• Submitted by: Juan Pablo Poujade
• code location: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2010-February/007419.html
• reviewers: none officially
• status: Waiting for guidance on how TCP congestion control variants will be implemented in general

Application layer

Chord/DHash DHT

• Submitted by: Harjot Gill
• code location: http://codereview.appspot.com/180107/show
• reviewers: Mathieu Lacage, Tom Henderson
• background: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2009-December/007222.html
• status: Dormant for a while

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: still in development

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: Was developed by Liu Jian, Google Summer of Code. Portions of this code are planned for a future release (ns-3.8 or later) when ns-3-simu is merged.

ns-3-simu sockopt patches

• code location: Four patches listed in http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2009-June/006144.html
• reviewer(s): TBD
• status: review requested on June 22
• background: http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2009-June/006144.html

Visualization

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

George Riley has made a prototype animator for PointToPoint links.

Joe Kopena is working on what he calls a "decorator" http://code.nsnam.org/tjkopena/

Hagen Paul Pfeifer is working on a MANET visualizer http://nv.dev.jauu.net/

Graphical simulation builder

Pierre Weiss and Sebastien Vincent have written an ns-3 scenario generator in Qt.

• http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2010-May/007998.html
• Mercurial download: http://svnet.u-strasbg.fr/hg/ns-3-generator/

NetExplorer

| NetExplorer is Gnome/Gtk network animation tool for NS-3.

Miscellaneous

L2 Ethernet switch module

• ns-developers post: http://groups.google.com/group/ns-3-users/browse_thread/thread/0091ac611dde1928#
• status: No code yet, starting development.

Parallel simulations (2008)

• 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.

Simulation Configuration and State Detection

In order to configure simulations across multiple, probably virtualized, machines a large amount of configuration must be performed in order to construct the component systems. The oppportunity for human error to creep in during this process renders it essentially manually unworkable for all but the simplest topologies. Craig Dowell is thinking about how to address this problem.

Simulation Configuration

Build system and project infrastructure

Modular build and package management

This issue is being tracked (requirements and wish list) on this page

State of Doxygen

Need to bring Doxygen into compliance (no errors, no warnings for missing documentation).

Buildbots

• investigate hooking code coverage (lcov) into the report
• investigate how the whole buildbot farm may be made available to a maintainer to test out a non-ns-3-dev repo.

Code contribution guidance

Tom took action item to simplify and clarify the project code contribution guidelines (for people wishing to contribute new code to ns-3).

Samples directory

Consider cleanup and move of samples/ directory to examples/?

Documentation

Considering to refactor documentation to split the existing manual into a model library and a software core reference manual, to add a lighter-weight tutorial, and to add a "cookbook" of howtos for common ns-3 tasks.

Website

Status: INRIA is organizing some updates to the website.

Suggested projects

2010 Google Summer of Code Project Ideas

We have posted some project ideas for Google Summer of Code. However, these ideas are not limited to the Google program.

Project ideas here

Path MTU discovery and fragmentation for IPv4 stacks

There is no path MTU discovery implemented for IPv4. This, combined with lack of fragmentation, makes guessing the end-to-end MTU imperative for ns-3 simulations. We would welcome a contribution that introduced path MTU discovery and IPv4 fragmentation to ns-3. Note that there is fragmentation support in the yans simulator that may be of use; contact Mathieu Lacage for more information.

Create non-IP stack for ns-3

All ns-3 simulations are IP based but there is no template for how to do this for non-IP-based stacks. One issue that should be addressed in the long term is that applications that generate traffic are strongly coupled to the sockets interface. It would be nice to decouple the traffic generation aspects of these applications from the sockets-related code.

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.