Development of real-time simulator using traffic monitoring

We have developed a real-time simulator that is connected to the network on-line and continuously uses the monitored IP traffic on AAL5/ATM. The simulator is software running on a real-time OS in a PC containing ATM network interface cards, which can use the information provided by the timestamp, VPI/VCI, IP address, protocol number, and port number of the monitored packets for the simulation. The simulator provides a simulation model of a multiplexer whose output link speed, buffer size, and queueing discipline can be changed by the user. In addition, we propose a simulation server that makes a simulation platform easily available. The simulator enables us to identify the appropriate amount of network resources, such as link speed and buffer size, and the effectiveness of various queueing disciplines. Numerical examples using the simulator in a real network are also shown.