ndnSIM Release Notes

This file contains ndnSIM release notes.

All of the ndnSIM documentation is accessible from the ndnSIM website.

Release 2.4 (Changes since release 2.3)

Release date: November 1, 2017

Overview

  • The submodules of NFD and ndn-cxx have been upgraded to version 0.6.0 (Issue #4306).

    NFD 0.6.0 release notes

    ndn-cxx 0.6.0 release notes

  • Upgrade the base NS-3 version to ns-3.27-22-g90fb309d5 (Issue #4311).

    Note

    In order to retrieve the marked versions of ndn-cxx and NFD, use --recursive option to the git clone command or run git submodule update --init after clone, pull, or merge.

    Note

    To set the maximum size of the used queue when porting already implemented scenarios to ndnSIM 2.4, the QueueBase::MaxPackets attribute has to be set instead of DropTailQueue::MaxPackets.

    Note

    ndnSIM 2.4 requires the following minimal compiler requirements:
    • g++-4.9 or later (Note: this is an upgraded requirement from ndnSIM 2.3)
    • Apple LLVM version 7.0.2 or later
    • clang-3.3 or later.

Improvements and bug fixes

  • Internal refactoring of dummy keychain to work with security v2 of ndn-cxx (Issue #4306)
  • Updates of the ndnSIM documentation and Technical Report (Issue #4039, Issue #4213)
    • Added page about community contributions to the simulator.
    • CS tracer documentation update.

Release 2.3 (Changes since release 2.2)

Release date: December 12, 2016

Overview

  • The submodules of NFD and ndn-cxx have been both upgraded to version 0.5 (Issue #3875).

    Features of NFD:

    • Adaptive SRTT-based Forwarding strategy has been added.
    • Breaking change – Configurable policy for admission of unsolicited data packets into the content store have been introduced.
    • Introduce mechanism to update properties (e.g., flags, persistency) of an existing Face.
    • Breaking change – ForwarderStatus dataset can now be requested only with /localhost/nfd/status/general interest.
    • Breaking change – Strategy API update. FIB entry is no longer supplied to the Strategy::afterReceiveInterest method (i.e., FIB lookup is not performed by the forwarding pipelines). When necessary, a strategy can request FIB lookup using Strategy::lookupFib.
    • Refactor implementation of RIB Manager to make it uniform with other managers.

    Features of ndn-cxx:

    • New transformation API.
    • Introduce Name::deepCopy to allow memory optimizations when working with Name objects.
    • New ndn::security::CommandInterestValidator class.
    • New FaceUpdateCommand structure for NFD management protocols.
    • Breaking change - Expose ControlResponse as part of Controller::CommandFailCallback.
    • Breaking change - Change security constants to corresponding strongly typed enumerations.

    Note

    In order to retrieve the marked versions of ndn-cxx and NFD, use --recursive option to the git clone command or run git submodule update --init after clone, pull, or merge.

  • Replace NetDeviceFaceLinkService with NetDeviceTransport to add full support of NDNLPv2 and, thus, network-layer NACK handling to ndnSIM (Issue #3871).

    ndnSIM now uses an implementation of nfd::face::Transport that enables the full support of NDNLPv2 and the handling of network-layer NACKs generated by NFD. NACKs can reach the ndnSIM applications.

    Note

    NACK handling by ndnSIM came at the cost of losing the NS3 related packet tags. The hopCount tag is now implemented as a tag of a packet directly at the NDNLPv2 layer.

New features

  • Enable NACK tracing by the network layer tracers (Issue #3872).
  • NetworkRegionTable helper was added to allow the configuration of the simulated nodes’ NetworkRegionTable (Issue #3806).

Improvements and bug fixes

  • Internal refactoring to use the ndnSIM-specific transport implementation (ndn::L3Protocol, ndn::StackHelper, ndn::LinkControlHelper, ndn::GlobalRoutingHelper, ndn::Consumer, ndn::Producer).
  • Updates of the ndnSIM documentation (Issue #3876)
    • Added explanation about the support of NDNLPv2 and its implications.

Release 2.2 (Changes since release 2.1)

Release date: November 11, 2016

Overview

  • The submodules of NFD and ndn-cxx have been both upgraded to version 0.4.1 (Issue #3560).

    Features of NFD:

    • Face system is refactored.
    • Data Retrieval using full names is fixed.
    • Allow setting CS capacity to 0.
    • LinkService provides an “adaptation” layer to translate between NDN packets and data blocks communicated through Transport.
    • Face provides combines Transport and LinkServices, providing high-level interface to work with Interest/Data/Nack packets inside NFD.
    • Networking NACK in pipelines and best-route strategy.
    • Refactored implementation of NFD management.
    • Interest forwarding processes Link included in interest packets.

    Features of ndn-cxx:

    • LocalControlHeader for special signaling between application and NFD has been replaced with NDNLPv2 signaling.
    • NDNLPv2 Network NACK support in Face abstraction.
    • New API in Face class to remove all pending Interests.

    Note

    In order to retrieve the marked versions of ndn-cxx and NFD, use --recursive option to the git clone command or run git submodule update --init after clone, pull, or merge.

  • Replace NetDeviceFace with NetDeviceFaceLinkService and AppFace with AppFaceModel to match NFD’s v0.4+ Face model (Issue #3560).

    ndnSIM (for now) intentionally uses LinkService instead of Transport for optimization purposes and in order to preserve ns3::Packet Tags. This may be fixed in the future when there is a different mechanism to propagate ns3 Tags.

    Note

    This version of ndnSIM does not include support for NDNLPv2 and, thus, cannot yet be used to simulate network-level NACKs across the simulated nodes. This will be addressed in the next release of ndnSIM.

  • ndnSIM no longer officially support Ubuntu Linux 12.04, as it now requires a more modern compiler version and dependent libraries.

New features

  • The NetDevice address is now represented as a LocalUri instance for NetDevice-based Faces (Issue #2665).

  • Enable configurability of NFD’s managers (Issue #3328).

    The managers of NFD can be enabled/disabled as specified in a simulation scenario.

Improvements and bug fixes

  • Bugfix in RandomPolicy for the “old-style” ContentStore implementation.

  • Updates of the ndnSIM 2 Technical Report

    Technical Report became up-to-date with the latest version of ndnSIM. Please see report’s change-log for more detailed information.

  • Updates of the ndnSIM documentation (Issue #3835)

    • Updated out-dated statements about NFD’s CS implementation (Issue #3827).
    • Added explanation about the limited support of NDNLPv2 and its implications.
    • Fixed description of the ConsumerBatches application.
    • Added homebrew instructions for dependency installation on OS X.
    • Added specification of ndn::CsTracer output format.

Release 2.1 (Changes since release 2.0)

Release date: September 4, 2015

Overview

New features

  • ndnSIM-specific version of ndn::Face (Issue #2370)

    The updated version of ndn::Face specially designed to allow writing simulation applications in the same way as real applications. It is also possible to directly use codebase of the existing applications to drive simulations, provided that the codebase meets or can be adjusted to meet the requirements listed in Simulating real NDN applications.

  • Full support for NFD’S RIB manager (Issue #2370)

    Note

    RIB manager support is currently available only for applications based on ndn-cxx. FibHelper::AddRoute() and FibHelper::RemoveRoute() used by ndn::Producer and ndn::GlobalRoutingHelper are currently interacting directly with NFD’s FIB manager. This issue will be resolved in the next release of ndnSIM (Issue #3121)

  • Tutorial and example on how to speed up simulations with MPI module of NS-3: http://ndnsim.net/2.0/parallel-simulations.html

  • Two new helpers to simplify writing basic simulation scenarios:

    • ScenarioHelper leverages C++11 constructs to write scenarios. Example:

      ScenarioHelper helper;
helper.createTopology({
    {"1", "2"},
    {"2", "3"}
  });

helper.addRoutes({
    {"1", "2", "/prefix", 1},
    {"2", "3", "/prefix", 1}
  });

helper.addApps({
    {"1", "ns3::ndn::ConsumerCbr",
        {{"Prefix", "/prefix"}, {"Frequency", "1"}},
        "0s", "100s"},
    {"3", "ns3::ndn::Producer",
        {{"Prefix", "/prefix"}, {"PayloadSize", "1024"}},
        "0s", "100s"}
  });

    • FactoryCallbackApp simplifies creation of basic apps without creating a separate class that is derived from ns3::Applications. Example:

      class SomeApp
{
public:
  SomeApp(size_t initParameter);
  ...
};

FactoryCallbackApp::Install(node, [] () -> shared_ptr<void> {
    return make_shared<SomeApp>(42);
  })
  .Start(Seconds(1.01));

Improvements and bug fixes

Release 2.0 (Changes since release 1.0)

Release date: January 13, 2015

Overview

ndnSIM 2.0 is a new release of NS-3 based Named Data Networking (NDN) simulator that went through extensive refactoring and rewriting. The key new features of the new version:

Note RIB Manager is not yet available in ndnSIM.

New Features

  • Integration with NFD codebase.
  • A realistic behavior is added to the simulations.
  • Forwarding plane extensions can be used in both ndnSIM simulations and real NFD deployment.
  • Per namespace forwarding strategies for different namespaces (one strategy per namespace).
  • New examples:
  • ndn-load-balancer
  • ndn-grid-multiple-strategies
  • ndn-different-strategy-per-prefix
  • Basic examples using python bindings: ndn-simple.py and ndn-grid.py
  • Use of the the full-featured NDN packet format.
  • Full-featured support for Interest selectors.
  • Full-featured crypto operations can be simulated (disabled by default).
  • FibHelper to manage FIB entries.
  • StrategyChoiceHelper to manage per-namespace forwarding strategy selection.

Changes

  • HopCount tracing now includes only one way network-level hop count (e.g., the number of physical links traversed by a packet). Previously, this tracing was round-trip and included applications hops.
  • Python bindings have changed and, due to limitations of pybindgen, currently cover a smaller subset of C++ code (Task #2341).
  • LinkControlHelper now uses ErrorRate to simulate link failure/recovery. Previously it was relying on Up/Down flag on NDN level.
  • The Face abstraction of NFD is now used.

Bug fixes

  • Fix processing files with customized LossRate or Queue model in AnnotatedTopologyReader Bug #2354.

Removals

  • PyNDN emulation
  • (temporarily) ApiFace. Will be replaced with emulation of ndn-cxx ndn::Face in future releases (Issue #2370).
  • (temporarily) UdpFace, TcpFace (Issue #2371).
  • Limits, LimitsWindow, LimitsRate.
  • PIT, FIB with “replacement” policies.
  • Old deprecated packet formats.