The ns-3 network simulator
ns-3 is a discrete-event network simulator for Internet systems, targeted primarily for research and educational use. ns-3 is free software, licensed under the GNU GPLv2 license, and is publicly available for research, development, and use.
ns-3 is intended as an eventual replacement for the popular ns-2 simulator. The project acronym “nsnam” derives historically from the concatenation of ns (network simulator) and nam (network animator).
- ns-3 overview (ppt) (pdf)
- Getting Started
Downloads
ns-3 is written in C++ and Python and is available as source code releases for Linux and Unix variants, OS X, and Windows via Cygwin.Latest stable release: ns-3.6 (October 21st, 2009)
Older releases: See the downloads page.
Roadmap and Current Development
ns-3 makes quarterly releases. ns-3.7 is tentatively scheduled for January 20, 2010. The summary ns-3 roadmap lists some future release plans.
Public development efforts are being tracked at this page. Our main development tree is the ns-3-dev repository. Please see our Getting Started page for how to work from the development branch.
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| Monthly download count of ns-3 releases | Cumulative lines of code changed over time |
Contributing
Building a great network simulator for research and education requires many contributions from the networking community. We outline the many ways that users can contribute on our Contributing web page.
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