The SimGrid Models¶

Todo

• Main existing models (contention, cste, LM07)

• Main concepts (Routing, LMM) + link to the papers

• How to switch on the command line

The default TCP model¶

When simulating a data transfer between two hosts, you may be surprised by the obtained simulation time. Lets consider the following platform:

<host id="A" speed="1Gf" />
<host id="B" speed="1Gf" />

<route src="A" dst="B">
</route>


If host A sends 100kB (a hundred kilobytes) to host B, one could expect that this communication would take 0.81 seconds to complete according to a simple latency-plus-size-divided-by-bandwidth model (0.01 + 8e5/1e6 = 0.81). However, the default TCP model of SimGrid is a bit more complex than that. It

accounts for three phenomena that directly impact the simulation time even on such a simple example:

• The size of a message at the application level (i.e., 100kB in this example) is not the size that will actually be transferred over the network. To mimic the fact that TCP and IP headers are added to each packet of the original payload, the TCP model of SimGrid empirically considers that only 97% of the nominal bandwidth are available. In other words, the size of your message is increased by a few percents, whatever this size be.

• In the real world, the TCP protocol is not able to fully exploit the bandwidth of a link from the emission of the first packet. To reflect this slow start phenomenon, the latency declared in the platform file is multiplied by a factor of 13.01. Here again, this is an empirically determined value that may not correspond to every TCP implementations on every networks. It can be tuned when more realistic simulated times for short messages are needed though.

• When data is transferred from A to B, some TCP ACK messages travel in the opposite direction. To reflect the impact of this cross-traffic, SimGrid simulates a flow from B to A that represents an additional bandwidth consumption of 0.05. The route from B to A is implicitly declared in the platform file and uses the same link link1 as if the two hosts were connected through a communication bus. The bandwidth share allocated to the flow from A to B is then the available bandwidth of link1 (i.e., 97% of the nominal bandwidth of 1Mb/s) divided by 1.05 (i.e., the total consumption). This feature, activated by default, can be disabled by adding the –cfg=network/crosstraffic:0 flag to command line.

As a consequence, the time to transfer 100kB from A to B as simulated by the default TCP model of SimGrid is not 0.81 seconds but

0.01 * 13.01 + 800000 / ((0.97 * 1e6) / 1.05) =  0.996079 seconds.


ns-3 as a SimGrid model¶

You can use the well-known ns-3 packet-level network simulator as a SimGrid model, for example to investigate the validity of your simulation. Just install ns-3 and recompile SimGrid accordingly.

The SimGrid/ns-3 binding only contains features that are common to both systems. Not all ns-3 models are available from SimGrid (only the TCP and WiFi ones are), while not all SimGrid platform files can be used in conjunction ns-3 (routes must be of length 1). Also, the platform built in ns-3 from the SimGrid description is very basic. Finally, communicating from a host to itself is forbidden in ns-3, so every such communication completes immediately upon startup.

Compiling the ns-3/SimGrid binding¶

Installing ns-3¶

SimGrid requires ns-3 version 3.26 or higher, and you probably want the most recent version of both SimGrid and ns-3. While the Debian package of SimGrid don’t have the ns-3 bindings activated, you can still use the packaged version of ns-3 by grabbing the libns3-dev ns3 packages. Alternatively, you can install ns-3 from scratch (see the ns-3 documentation).

Enabling ns-3 in SimGrid¶

SimGrid must be recompiled with the enable_ns3 option activated in cmake. Optionally, use NS3_HINT to tell cmake where ns3 is installed on your disk.

cmake . -Denable_ns3=ON -DNS3_HINT=/opt/ns3 # or change the path if needed


By the end of the configuration, cmake reports whether ns-3 was found, and this information is also available in include/simgrid/config.h If your local copy defines the variable SIMGRID_HAVE_NS3 to 1, then ns-3 was correctly detected. Otherwise, explore CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log and CMakeFiles/CMakeError.log to diagnose the problem.

Test that ns-3 was successfully integrated with the following (from your SimGrid build directory). It will run all SimGrid tests that are related to the ns-3 integration. If no test is run at all, you probably forgot to enable ns-3 in cmake.

ctest -R ns3


Troubleshooting¶

If you use a version of ns-3 that is not known to SimGrid yet, edit tools/cmake/Modules/FindNS3.cmake in your SimGrid tree, according to the comments on top of this file. Conversely, if something goes wrong with an old version of either SimGrid or ns-3, try upgrading everything.

Using ns-3 from SimGrid¶

Platform files compatibility¶

Any route longer than one will be ignored when using ns-3. They are harmless, but you still need to connect your hosts using one-hop routes. The best solution is to add routers to split your route. Here is an example of an invalid platform:

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE platform SYSTEM "https://simgrid.org/simgrid.dtd">
<platform version="4.1">
<zone id="zone0" routing="Floyd">
<host id="alice" speed="1Gf" />
<host id="bob"   speed="1Gf" />

<route src="alice" dst="bob">
<link_ctn id="l1"/>            <!-- !!!! IGNORED WHEN USED WITH ns-3       !!!! -->
<link_ctn id="l2"/>            <!-- !!!! ROUTES MUST CONTAIN ONE LINK ONLY !!!! -->
</route>
</zone>
</platform>


This can be reformulated as follows to make it usable with the ns-3 binding. There is no direct connection from alice to bob, but that’s OK because ns-3 automatically routes from point to point (using ns3::Ipv4GlobalRoutingHelper::PopulateRoutingTables).

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE platform SYSTEM "https://simgrid.org/simgrid.dtd">
<platform version="4.1">
<zone id="zone0" routing="Full">
<host id="alice" speed="1Gf" />
<host id="bob"   speed="1Gf" />

<router id="r1" /> <!-- routers are compute-less hosts -->

<route src="alice" dst="r1">
</route>

<route src="r1" dst="bob">
</route>
</zone>
</platform>


Once your platform is OK, just change the network/model configuration option to ns-3 as follows. The other options can be used as usual.

./network-ns3 --cfg=network/model:ns-3 (other parameters)


Many other files from the examples/platform directory are usable with the ns-3 model, such as examples/platforms/dogbone.xml. Check the file examples/cpp/network-ns3/network-ns3.tesh to see which ones are used in our regression tests.

WiFi platforms¶

In SimGrid, WiFi networks are modeled with WiFi zones, where a zone contains the access point of the WiFi network and the hosts connected to it (called station in the WiFi world). Links inside WiFi zones are modeled as regular links with a specific attribute, and these links are then added to routes between hosts. The main difference When using ns-3 WiFi networks is that the network performance is not given by the link bandwidth and latency but by the access point WiFi characteristics, and the distance between the access point and the hosts.

So, to declare a new WiFi network, simply declare a zone with the WIFI routing.

<zone id="SSID_1" routing="WIFI">


Inside this zone you must declare which host or router will be the access point of the WiFi network.

<prop id="access_point" value="alice"/>


Afterward simply declare the hosts and routers inside the WiFi network. Remember that one must have the same name as declared in the property “access point”.

<router id="alice" speed="1Gf"/>
<host id="STA0-0" speed="1Gf"/>
<host id="STA0-1" speed="1Gf"/>


Finally, close the WiFi zone.

</zone>


The WiFi zone may be connected to another zone using a traditional link and a zoneRoute. Note that the connection between two zones is always wired.

<link id="wireline" bandwidth="100Mbps" latency="2ms" sharing_policy="SHARED"/>

<zoneRoute src="SSID_1" dst="SSID_2" gw_src="alice" gw_dst="bob">
</zoneRoute>

WiFi network performance¶

The performance of a wifi network is controlled by 3 property that can be added to hosts connected to the wifi zone:

• mcs (Modulation and Coding Scheme) Roughly speaking, it defines the speed at which the access point is exchanging data with all stations. It depends on its model and configuration, and the possible values are listed for example on Wikipedia.
By default, mcs=3. It is a property of the WiFi zone.

• nss (Number of Spatial Streams, or number of antennas) defines the amount of simultaneous data streams that the AP can sustain. Not all value of MCS and NSS are valid nor compatible (cf. 802.11n standard).
By default, nss=1. It is a property of the WiFi zone.

• wifi_distance is the distance from the station to the access point. Each station can have a specific value.
By default, wifi_distance=10. It is a property of stations of the WiFi network.

Here is an example of a zone changing mcs and nss values.

<zone id="SSID_1" routing="WIFI">
<prop id="access_point" value="alice"/>
<prop id="mcs" value="2"/>
<prop id="nss" value="2"/>
...
</zone>


Here is an example of a host changing wifi_distance value.

<host id="STA0-0" speed="1Gf">
<prop id="wifi_distance" value="37"/>
</host>


Random Number Generator¶

It is possible to define a fixed or random seed to the ns3 random number generator using the config tag.

<?xml version='1.0'?><!DOCTYPE platform SYSTEM "https://simgrid.org/simgrid.dtd">
<platform version="4.1">
<config>
<prop id = "network/model" value = "ns-3" />
<prop id = "ns3/seed" value = "time" />
</config>
...
</platform>


The first property defines that this platform will be used with the ns3 model. The second property defines the seed that will be used. Defined to time it will use a random seed, defined to a number it will use this number as the seed.

Limitations¶

A ns-3 platform is automatically created from the provided SimGrid platform. However, there are some known caveats:

• The default values (e.g., TCP parameters) are the ns-3 default values.

• ns-3 networks are routed using the shortest path algorithm, using ns3::Ipv4GlobalRoutingHelper::PopulateRoutingTables.

• End hosts cannot have more than one interface card. So, your SimGrid hosts should be connected to the platform through only one link. Otherwise, your SimGrid host will be considered as a router (FIXME: is it still true?).

Our goal is to keep the ns-3 plugin of SimGrid as easy (and hopefully readable) as possible. If the current state does not fit your needs, you should modify this plugin, and/or create your own plugin from the existing one. If you come up with interesting improvements, please contribute them back.

Troubleshooting¶

If your simulation hangs in a communication, this is probably because one host is sending data that is not routable in your platform. Make sure that you only use routes of length 1, and that any host is connected to the platform. Arguably, SimGrid could detect this situation and report it, but unfortunately, this is still to be done.