FLUID-FLOW AND PACKET-LEVEL MODELS OF DATA NETWORKS UNIFIED UNDER A MODULAR/HIERARCHICAL FRAMEWORK: SPEEDUPS AND SIMPLICITY, COMBINED

As network technologies undergo an exponential growth in terms of bandwidth and topology complexity, the gap is worsened between the performance of network simulation techniques and real network scenarios. Fluid-flow models for network dynamics are a well know option for reducing simulation overhead while offering useful averaged approximations of network metrics. Yet, the methods and tools established in the packet-level simulation community are alien to those used in continuous system modeling by means of differential equations. This hinders the synergy between specialists in both techniques. In this work, we present a novel modeling methodology and simulation tool to unify the experience of designing network simulation models both with fluid-level and packet-level techniques under a single modular and hierarchical formal framework. We verified the efficacy of our approach both in terms of simulation speedups and modeling simplicity for canonical network simulation scenarios.