Introduction

A network simulator mimics the behaviour of networks but cannot connect to real networks. NetSim Emulator enables users to connect NetSim simulator to real hardware and interact with live applications.

  • NetSim emulator is an IP based, data plane, flow-through emulator. This means:

  • It can interact with IP based devices.

  • It can emulate data plane functionality and not control plane functionality.

  • The source and destination for traffic should be external. A virtual device within NetSim cannot be a source or sink for traffic.

Emulation: How Simulation interacts with the real world

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Figure-1: Simulator interacting with the real world

A real PC (running NetSim Emulation Client) sends live traffic to the PC (running NetSim Emulation Server). Whenever a packet arrives at the interface of server, this packet is “converted” into a simulation packet and sent from a source node (user selectable) in the simulated network (user configurable) to a destination node (again user selectable). Upon receipt of this packet at the destination, the packet is then “re-converted” and sent back to a real PC destination node (running NetSim Emulation Client). The real packet thus undergoes network effects such as delay, loss, error etc. created virtually by NetSim Simulator.