cnet 2.0.10 review

The cnet network simulator (v2.0.10) enables experimentation with various data-link layer, network layer, routing and transport layer

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 1131K Developer: Dr. Chris McDonald

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The cnet network simulator (v2.0.10) enables experimentation with various data-link layer, network layer, routing and transport layer networking protocols in networks consisting of any combination of point-to-point links and IEEE 802.3 Ethernet segments. cnet has been specifically developed for, and is used in, undergraduate computer networking courses taken by thousands of students worldwide since 1991. At The University of Western Australia, cnet is used primarily in Chris McDonald's undergraduate unit Computer Networks (IT312).

cnet either displays the entire network under Tcl/Tk or runs rather less visually on an ASCII terminal. Under Tcl/Tk, cnet provides a graphical representation of the network under execution and permits a number of attributes of the network to be modified while the simulation is running. Nodes may be selected with the mouse to reveal a sub-window displaying the output and protocol statistics of that node. Some of the node's attributes, such as message generation rates and sizes, may be modified while the network is running by selecting choice buttons. Similarly, the default attributes of all nodes in the network may be simultaneously modified by selecting and changing global attributes. From another menu, each node may be forced to reboot, (impolitely) crash, (politely) shutdown and reboot, pause and (hardware) fail, you can do many things.

You should note the following requirements and restrictions for various systems:

If using a Linux(ELF) system, the freely-available libelf package is required. Most Linux(ELF) systems (with at least version 2.0 kernels) now provide a copy of libelf, but if yours doesn't it greatly simplifies things if you can install libelf globally on your system. A full copy of libelf is included in the cnet distribution.
If using SunOS you should be using Release 4.1.2 or beyond. If still using Release 4.1.1 you must obtain and install Sun-Patch-ID#100257-03 (4-Oct-91) - whoa! welcome to the 21st century.
If using an SGI-IRIX machine, you must be using Release 5 or 6 (Release 4 is not supported).
Older Linux systems with a.out formats are no longer supported.
cnet has been tested with most Tcl/Tk versions, (Tcl7.X+Tk3.X), (Tcl7.X+Tk4.X), (Tcl8.0+Tk8.0), and. (Tcl8.3+Tk8.3).