NETMAN: an object-oriented environment for experimenting distributed algorithms on a network of workstations

We present the object oriented design of a software system called NETMAN to experiment distributed algorithms on a large network of workstations. The design has been structured into three layers and a central monitoring site. We have implemented the system in Java. Two asynchronous communication primitives, SEND and RECEIVE, have been implemented using Java's remote method invocation mechanism. As an example, we executed a distributed mutual exclusion algorithm on a network of 60 workstations, and measured its performance under various scenarios.