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    The Network Simulator, Version 3
    --------------------------------
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Table of Contents:
------------------
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1) An Open Source project
2) An overview of the ns-3 project
3) Building ns-3
4) Running ns-3
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5) Getting access to the ns-3 documentation
6) Working with the development version of ns-3
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1) An Open Source project
-------------------------
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ns-3 is an Open Source project.   We intend to make this
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project a successful collaborative project: we hope that 
the missing pieces of the models we have not yet implemented
will be contributed by the community in an open collaboration
process.
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Contributing to the ns-3 project is still a very informal
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process because that process depends heavily on the background
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of the people involved, the amount of time they can invest
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and the type of model they want to work on.  
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Despite this lack of a formal process, there are a number of 
steps which naturally stem from the open-source roots of the
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project.  These steps are described in doc/contributing.txt
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2) An overview of the ns-3 project
----------------------------------

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This package contains the latest version of ns-3 which aims 
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at being a replacement for ns-2. Currently, ns-3 provides a 
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number of simple network simulation models:
  - an ipv4 and tcp and udp stack
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  - arp support at the bottom of the stack
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  - static global and OLSR unicast routing
  - point-to-point, CSMA, and Wifi links
  - mobility
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  - OnOff traffic generator

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Our focus to date has been on getting an overall software
framework in place.  The framework is there to make adding 
new models as simple as possible:
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  - an extensive callback-based tracing system 
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  - simple file trace serialization support is included
    to both text and pcap files.

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  - an attribute system for configuring parameters in the 
    models

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  - adding new MAC-level models simply requires subclassing
    the pair of classes NetDevice and Channel.

  - adding new traffic generation algorithms is also very 
    simple through the Application and the Socket classes.

3) Building ns-3
----------------

The code for the framework and the default models provided
by ns-3 is built as a set of libraries. User simulations
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are expected to be written as simple programs that make
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use of these ns-3 libraries.

To build the set of default libraries and the example
programs included in this package, you need to use the
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tool 'waf'. Detailed information on how use waf is 
included in the file doc/build.txt
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However, the real quick and dirty way to get started is to
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type the command "./waf" the the directory which contains
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this README file. The files built will be copied in the
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build/debug or build/optimized.
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The current codebase is expected to build and run on the
following set of platforms:
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  - linux x86 gcc 4.2, 4.1, and, 3.4.6.
  - linux x86_64 gcc 4.1.3, 4.2.1, 3.4.6
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  - MacOS X ppc and x86
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  - mingw gcc 3.4.5 (debug only)
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  - cygwin gcc 3.4.4 (debug only)
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The current codebase is expected to fail to build on
the following platforms:
  - gcc 3.3 and earlier
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  - optimized builds on gcc 3.4.4 and 3.4.5
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  - optimized builds on linux x86 gcc 4.0 

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The following optional features are known to not work on
these platforms:
  - mingw: python bindings, nsc, realtime scheduler
  - cygwin: python bindings, nsc

Other platforms may or may not work: we welcome patches to 
improve the portability of the code to these other platforms. 
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4) Running ns-3
---------------

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On recent Linux systems, once you have built ns-3, it 
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should be easy to run the sample programs with the
following command:

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./waf --run simple-global-routing
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That program should generate a simple-global-routing.tr text 
trace file and a set of simple-global-routing-xx-xx.pcap binary
pcap trace files, which can be read by tcpdump -tt -r filename.pcap
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5) Getting access to the ns-3 documentation
-------------------------------------------

Once you have verified that your build of ns-3 works by running
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the simple-point-to-point example as outlined in 4) above, it is
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quite likely that you will want to get started on reading
some ns-3 documentation. 

All of that documentation should always be available from
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the ns-3 website: http:://www.nsnam.org/ but we
include some of it in this release for ease of use.
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This documentation includes:
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  - a tutorial
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  - a wiki for user-contributed tips: http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/

  - an API documentation generated using doxygen: this is
    a reference manual, most likely not very well suited 
    as introductory text:
    http://www.nsnam.org/doxygen/index.html

6) Working with the development version of ns-3
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-----------------------------------------------

If you want to download and use the development version 
of ns-3, you need to use the tool 'mercurial'. A quick and
dirty cheat sheet is included in doc/mercurial.txt but
reading through the mercurial tutorials included on the
mercurial website is usually a good idea if you are not
familiar with it.

If you have successfully installed mercurial, you can get
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a copy of the development version with the following command:
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"hg clone http://code.nsnam.org/ns-3-dev"