A Network Simulator Using Step Execution Function

Abstract

The development of networking abilities is essential for people in the current digital era. However, knowledge of network communication, packet sending and receiving between devices, device statuses, and network configuration settings are necessary to function as a network engineer. Network simulators provide sophisticated methods for understanding and instructing on the complex concepts of computer networks. They also make it easier to visualize and simulate networks of any topology. Therefore, implementing a simulator that provides a way to solve difficulties linked to understanding computer networks would be very beneficial to students. This is because students can practice on their own at home and the teacher has an extra resource to use when teaching networking subjects. Simulators are the ideal tools for identifying concepts in computer design, even though network communication processes between devices are hard to understand without extensive study and experience. Many students are difficult to understand the communication mechanism that is a component of TCP/IP because reading textbooks and attending lectures are insufficient to grasp. Network simulators are useful tools for teaching computer networks. The learners are unable to track and comprehend the complicated processes that take place in the computer network during the data exchange between the network devices since they are done in extremely short time slices. The simulator that uses a step execution function involves designing a system where it can simulate the behavior of nodes or entities in a network over discrete time steps. The primary goal is to represent these processes visually. The proposed system assists students in comprehending it through experimentation with network behavior. In this system, the method calculates packet transmission step-by-step using the network configuration setting, certain packets, and step counts as input. This approach allows the students to understand how networks behave. Additionally, at any point, they can also change the network states, and the altered network state is used to launch the simulation again in analyzing network behavior for various settings.