Visual Network Simulator (VNS): A GUI to QoS simulation for the ns-2 simulator

The growth of the number of hosts connected to the Internet and of new applications increased the importance of research and development of quality of service (QoS)-based networks. In order to optimize the proposal and the validation of new QoS architectures and technologies, Simulation seems to be the best solution when considering the deployment efforts, cost and scalability. Unfortunately, the existing platforms and tools for simulating QoS-based networks either do not support all the architectures and technologies or do not fully support their characteristics. Basically, a simulation life-cycle can be divided into three phases: specification of the scenario, simulation of the events and analysis of the results of the simulation. This paper presents a platform for the specification of networks scenarios supporting Quality of Service and multicast, which can be simulated using ns-2. This platform provides the author with the possibility of covering all the three phases of the simulation life-cycle on-the-fly.