DCE Cradle: Simulate Network Protocols with Real Stacks for Better Realism

Reusing real protocol implementations of the kernel network stack in network simulators can increase the realism of network experimentations as well as decrease the cost of protocol development. In this paper, we introduce DCE Cradle, a novel framework that allows to use any features of Linux kernel network stack with existing ns-3 applications. DCE Cradle uses Direct Code Execution (DCE) to address the brittleness of Network Simulation Cradle (NSC). We validate DCE Cradle with TCP goodput measurements, and analyze its performance overhead with micro-benchmarks in a large scale simulation. Then we show with an example, an actual implementation of the DCCP transport protocol, how easy it is to simulate a real implementation using DCE Cradle. We believe that this tool can highly benefit the network community by enabling more realistic evaluation of network protocols.