Tools and Techniques for Teaching and Research in Network Design and Simulation

Abstract

Computer networking is taught for some time at universities. A network is a complex mix of applications, communications protocols and link technologies, traffic flows and routing algorithms. Teaching the networking concept, the network design process is a challenging task, requiring designers to balance user performance expectations with costs and capacities. One of the obvious approaches employed to deal with its complexity is through the use of modelling and simulation techniques. This paper examines three best educational tools that can be used in the Computer Networking course at Cardiff Metropolitan University or any University for educational purpose. The paper demonstrates that a successful teaching programme needs to combine a range of teaching tools to achieve its aims. Analysing various aspects of the course provides evaluation of the overall success of the tools. Many network design and simulation tools have been studied. Based on our research and experiment, the best educational tools were selected that could be used for the purpose of teaching in the area of computer communications networks. The wide area network modelling tool Delite, the network simulator ns-3, the topology generation tool Brite can be used together to teach students the networking concepts. These tools can not only help students to understand computer network principles but also improve their network practical skills. Currently there are various tools available that are created by different companies and groups of researchers in academia and that are intended for use as practical and/or educational tools for network design including security issues. To make this task easy, different users, researchers and companies have developed different network modelling and simulation (MS) tools. Very often, such tools are addressing different issues in the network design process which are complementary to each other. It would be useful for learning and improving the network design process by allowing the use of a variety of tools.