2nd International ICST International Workshop on Network Simulation Tools

Research Article

A 2k · r factorial analysis tool for ns2measure

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/ICST.VALUETOOLS2009.7513,
        author={Claudio Cicconetti and Enzo Mingozzi and Carlo Vallati},
        title={A 2k · r factorial analysis tool for ns2measure},
        proceedings={2nd International ICST International Workshop on Network Simulation Tools},
        publisher={ACM},
        proceedings_a={NSTOOLS},
        year={2010},
        month={5},
        keywords={Simulation tools ns-2 statistical analysis network simulation factorial analysis},
        doi={10.4108/ICST.VALUETOOLS2009.7513}
    }
    
  • Claudio Cicconetti
    Enzo Mingozzi
    Carlo Vallati
    Year: 2010
    A 2k · r factorial analysis tool for ns2measure
    NSTOOLS
    ICST
    DOI: 10.4108/ICST.VALUETOOLS2009.7513
Claudio Cicconetti1,*, Enzo Mingozzi1,*, Carlo Vallati1,*
  • 1: Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, University of Pisa, Via Diotisalvi, 2 – 56122 Pisa, ITALY
*Contact email: c.cicconetti@iet.unipi.it, e.mingozzi@iet.unipi.it, c.vallati@iet.unipi.it

Abstract

In recent years simulation has been the most used tool for performance analysis of communication networks, due to the ever increasing complexity of modern architectures and technologies. There are two correlated problems that are typically encountered when using simulation, especially by less experienced practitioners. Often, the number of factors that affect the response of such systems is high, which makes it difficult to distinguish their relative impact on the performance. Secondly, it would be helpful to know which are the most important factors before running the actual simulation campaign, so as to reduce the number of scenarios, hence the overall computational time, which otherwise can grow unnecessarily large. Both these problems are alleviated substantially if well-established methodologies, e.g. the 2k × r factorial analysis, are employed. In this work we present a new tool that implement all the procedures for running a 2k × r factorial analysis in a simple and sound manner. The tool, called factorial2kr, has been developed within the ns2measure framework, which is an integrated module, in a mature state of development, for collecting and analyzing statistical data with the widely used network simulator ns-2. The software is released under GPL.