Parallel Real-time Immersive network Modeling Environment (PRIME)

OVERVIEW

The success of advancing technologies critical to designing future-generation high-performance global networks and reliable distributed applications hinges on the available tools that can effectively prototype, test, and analyze new ideas. The goal of the PRIME research project is to investigate fundamental technologies that enable real-time large-scale network simulations and to develop a real-time immersive network simulation environment.

Real-time network simulation combines the advantages of both simulation and emulation by running simulation models that interact with the physical world. Real-world distributed applications and network services can run together with the simulator that operates in real time. Real packets are injected into the simulation system and subject to the simulated network conditions computed as a result of both real and virtual traffic traversing the network and competing for network resources.

Immersive large-scale network simulation requires that the simulation not only capture important characteristics of the target global network, but also support seamless interactions with distributed applications in real time. For someone operating a network, the behavior of the immersive virtual network should not be distinguished from that of a physical network. [more]

PUBLICATIONS

• Real-time network simulation support for scalable routing experiments, Yue Li, Jason Liu, and Raju Rangaswami, submitted for publication. (This is an extended journal paper of our PADS'08 paper, with new large-scale routing experiments conducted on OpenVZ.)
• A real-time network simulation infrastructure based on OpenVPN, Jason Liu, Yue Li, Nathanael Van Vorst, Scott Mann, Keith Hellman, Elsevier Journal of Systems and Software, accepted. (This is an extended journal paper of our INFOCOM'07 paper, with a new performance analysis of the software infrastructure and a new case study of using the software infrastructure to conduct routing experiments.)
• Immersive real-time large-scale network simulation: a research summary, Jason Liu, NSFNGS Workshop, in conjunction with the 22nd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS'08), Miami, FL, April 14-18, 2008.
• Toward scalable routing experiments with real-time network simulation, Yue Li, Jason Liu, and Raju Rangaswami. 22nd Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation (PADS'08), Rome, Italy, June 3-6, 2008.
• A primer for real-time simulation of large-scale networks, Jason Liu, 41st Annual Simulation Symposium (ANSS'08), part of the 2008 Spring Simulation Multiconference, Ottawa, Canada. April 14-16, 2008. pp. 85-94.
• On the performance of a hybrid network traffic model, Jason Liu and Yue Li, Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory. 16(6):656-669, 2008.
• Parallel hybrid network traffic models, Jason Liu and Yue Li, submitted for publication. (This is an extended journal paper of our PADS'07 paper.)
• Parallel simulation of hybrid network traffic models, Jason Liu. 21st Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation (PADS'07), San Diego, CA, June 12-15, 2007.
• An open and scalable emulation infrastructure for large-scale real-time network simulations, Jason Liu, Scott Mann, Nathanael Van Vorst, and Keith Hellman. INFOCOM 2007 MiniSymposium, Anchorage, Alaska, May 6-12, 2007. (Here's an extended version of this paper.)
• Packet-level integration of fluid TCP models in real-time network simulation, Jason Liu. 2006 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC'06), Monterey, CA, December 2-5, 2006.

Former Work:

• RINSE: the real-time immersive network simulation environment for network security exercises (extended version), Michael Liljenstam, Jason Liu, David Nicol, Yougu Yuan, Guanhua Yan, and Chris Grier. Simulation: Transactions of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International, 82(1):43-59, January 2006.
• Advanced concepts in large-scale network simulation, David M. Nicol, Michael Liljenstam and Jason Liu. 2005 Winter Simulation Conference, Orlando, FL, December 4-7, 2005.

DOCUMENTATION

• PRIME Internal TWiki Page (for PRIME research group members only).

• PRIME Installation Guide.
• PRIME SSF Users Manual.
• PRIME SSF Reference Manual.
• PRIME SSFNet User's Manual.
• PRIME SSFNet Reference Manual.

• PRIME Show and Tell: Examples and Templates.
• How to set up a large scale routing experiment with PRIME.

DOWNLOAD

You can download the latest code directly from our subversion server. Detailed instructions can be found in the installation guide.

You can also download PRIME as a compressed tarball. You'd also need to follow the instructions in the installation guide to build PRIME.

The latest PRIME version is 3.0.1 (prime-3.0.1.tgz). Here is the release note.

PEOPLE

The PRIME project is lead by Prof. Jason Liu.

Current students:

• Yue Li, postdoc student.
• Miguel Erazo, Ph.D. student.
• Ting Li, Ph.D. student.

Past students:

• Nathanael Van Vorst, Ph.D. student.
• Dallas Nutsch, REU/M.S. student.
• Keith Hellman, Ph.D. student.
• Scott Mann, Ph.D. student.
• Alex Probst, Ph.D. student.
• Chad Metcalf, M.S. student.
• Eric Chiu, REU student.
• Nathan Fry, REU student.
• Philip Loden, REU student.
• Adam McCormick, undergraduate student.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project is supported in part by an NSF CAREER Award (CNS-0546712, CNS-0836408).

NVIDIA has donated some graphics cards.