Heterogeneous Cell-Relay Network Simulation and Performance Analysis with Ptolemy

Allen Y. Lao

Memorandum No. UCB/ERL M94/8, Electronics Research Laboratory, College of Engineering
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
February 17, 1994

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ABSTRACT

Ptolemy is a platform which allows the modeling and simulation of communication networks, signal processing, and various other applications. Its unique set of internal object-oriented interfaces allows it to merge heterogeneous descriptions of distinct system components into a unified simulation. This report concerns itself with asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), cell-relay network simulation and shows how the combination of three different domains (modes of system description) lends itself very well to this type of experiment: a synchronous dataflow (SDF) domain, a discrete-event (DE) domain, and a message queue (MQ) domain. The work presented follows on the details of a backbone network simulation described in [1]. It is not the goal of this report to focus on network-layer management and related issues; instead, it focuses on modeling techniques and performance evaluation of various popular, practical queueing disciplines for space-division packet switches. Ptolemy's naturalness for the simulation of such a heterogeneous environment will be demonstrated as well as its usefulness for analyzing network behavior and performance.

[1] J. Loh, Aug. 1991, "ATM Packet Speech Simulation Using Ptolemy," M.S. Report, Electronics Research Laboratory, Dept. of EECS, U. California Berkeley.