Metanet

Recently, simulation has became the most effective way for analyzing and perfecting the performance of telecommunication networks. It has proven itself as the best method in the realm of education, where the hardware capabilities for practical training are often limited. A simulated network enables students to practice hands-on network programming and to understand, in a practical way, how a data communication network operates and how protocols work.Metanet is an environment that enables the programmer to write networking applications and to test them as if using an IP network with the hosts connected through Ethernet. The whole software is a multi-process application that makes use of just the resources offered by a single machine. It runs on a UNIX system and emulates hosts that also communicate through an emulated network using TCP/IP. Each layer of the hosts' operating system is designed as a separate process that will communicate with the adjacent layers using socket pairs or UDP connections. The application layer has multi-processing capability.Department of Computer ScienceThesis (M.S.