NetScale: scalable time-stepped hybrid simulation of large IP networks

This paper presents a scalable time-stepped hybrid simulation algorithm which is well adapted to the simulation of large IP networks (up to one million of competing ows and network elements), while tracking reactive traffic behaviour and packet-level phenomena e.g. timeout trigger or packet burstiness. This simulation paradigm allows one to gain several orders of magnitude of computation time compared to traditional discrete event simulation approaches. The accuracy of this simulation method is evaluated by comparison to other simulation methodologies. Examples of large scale network simulations are also presented.