My First NS-2 Teaching Experiance

Network Simulator NS-2 is a tough one to understand for beginners in the field of network simulation. Due to its credibility in the research community most of the researchers look forward to implement and realize their ideas on this simulator. I am no exception for this. As a major task of learning simulation and emulation tools in this semester, I have started learning and practicing this simulation tool along with TinyOs, nesC and TOSSIM. Unfortunately, I got an opportunity to conduct a mini workshop on NS-2 to my peers for three days. This workshop has conducted during 17-19 June 2010. However, I am very glad to work on chalking out required lesson plan for three day to conduct workshop smoothly. Finally, I came out with the following agenda.


Day 1 (17.06.2013)

Introduction to Simulation
           Discrete Event System Simulation
Simulation Tools available for computer network simulation
          Available tools, their pros and cons
Review of Network Protocol Stacks
          ISO-OSI, TCP/IP
NS-2 Installation and setup with Eclipse
           TCL scripting
           Tcl and OTcl Basics
           Writing TCL Scripts
NS-2 Trace formats (Wired and Wireless)
Introduction to AWK programming
          AWK basics
          Writing AWK scripts to analyze Trace formats
Network Simulator NS-2 Basics
Packets, Packet Headers and Header Formats

Day 2 (18.06.2013)

Recap of Day 1
Creating User Defined Agents in NS-2
           Working with TclObject, TclClass, and Agent classes
           Writing Tcl Script for using user defined agent
Simulating Wireless Networks
           Writing Tcl Script for simulating wireless networks
Introduction to STL in C++
           Utility classes (Map, Vector and Iterater classes)
Writing User Defined Routing Algorithms in NS-2
          Review – Packet, Packet Header and Header Formats
          Review – Agents and related classes
          Working with Timers
Writing Tcl Script for simulating user defined routing algorithm

Day 3 (19.06.2013)

Project – Implementing Greedy Pare meter Stateless Routing (GPSR Algorithm)
Conclusion

During this workshop my colleges (co-researchers)  have gained an insight in learning this tough tool. In addition, I have exposed to various search direction to use the simulators to the extent possible and my weak areas to strength up in network simulation with the help of their interaction and discussions.
I request the readers of this post to make comment on the course content for improvements, enhancements, suggestions, schedules, etc ( any other word in synonym) which greatly improve the credibility of teaching NS-2.