A Performance Comparison of Network Simulators for Wireless Networks

TL;DR

This paper compares various open-source network simulators like ns-2, ns-3, and OMNET++ based on performance metrics such as CPU, memory, and scalability to guide researchers in selecting the most suitable tool for wireless network research.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive performance comparison of leading network simulators, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses for wireless network research.

Findings

ns-3 shows better scalability than ns-2.

OMNET++ has lower CPU utilization under high load.

GloMoSiM offers faster simulation times for large networks.

Abstract

Network simulation is the most useful and common methodology used to evaluate different network to-pologies without real world implementation. Network simulators are widely used by the research community to evaluate new theories and hypotheses. There are a number of network simulators, for instance, ns-2, ns-3, OMNET++, SWAN, OPNET, Jist, and GloMoSiM etc. Therefore, the selection of a network simulator for evaluating research work is a crucial task for researchers. The main focus of this paper is to compare the state-of-the-art, open source network simulators based on the following parameters: CPU utilization, memory usage, computational time, and scalability by simulating a MANET routing protocol, to identify an optimal network simulator for the research community.