FluNet: A hybrid internet simulator for fast queue regimes

Abstract

Motivated by the scale and complexity of simulating large-scale networks, recent research has focused on hybrid fluid/ packet simulators, where fluid models are combined with packet models in order to reduce simulation complexity as well as to track dynamics of end-sources accurately. However, these simulators still need to track the queuing dynamics of network routers, leading to considerable simulation complexity in a large-scale network model. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid simulator - FluNet - where queueing dynamics are not tracked, but instead, an equivalent rate-based model is used. The FluNet simulator is predicated on a fast-queueing regime at bottleneck routers, where the queue length fluctuates on a faster time-scale than end systems. This allows us to simulate large-scale systems, where the simulation "time step-size" is governed only by the time-scale of the end-systems, and not by that of the intermediate routers; whereas a queue-tracking based fluid simulator would require decreasingly smaller step-sizes as the system scale size increases. We validate our model using a ns-2 based implementation. Our results indicate a good match between packet systems and the associated FluNet system. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.