Applying parallel discrete event simulation to network emulation

The simulation of wide area computer networks is one area where the benefits of parallel simulation have been clearly demonstrated. We present a description of a system that uses a parallel discrete event simulator to act as a high speed network emulator. With this, real Internet Protocol (IP) traffic generated by application programs running on user workstations can interact with modelled traffic in the emulator thus providing a controlled test environment for distributed applications. The network emulator uses the TasKit conservative parallel discrete event simulation (PDES) kernel. TasKit has been shown to be able to achieve improved parallel performance over existing conservative and optimistic PDES kernels, as well as improved sequential performance over an existing central-event-list based kernel. This paper explains the modifications that have been made to TasKit to enable real-time operation along with the emulator interface that allows the IP network simulation running in the TasKit kernel to interact with real IP clients. Initial emulator performance data is included.