NetSim Support Portal

NetSim has an in-built traffic generator that allows users to configure unicast, multicast, and broadcast transmissions for various traffic models such as CBR, FTP, Video, Voice, Database, etc.

To model a request-response application in NetSim, users can use the HTTP traffic model. HTTP follows a client-server architecture and operates as a request-response application rather than a simple source-destination transmission model. In this model, the client node sends page requests to the server, and the server responds with webpage data whose size is specified in bytes.

Note that the HTTP application in NetSim does not model file transfer. Instead, it behaves like a streaming web-browsing application, where webpages are continuously downloaded from the server, similar to a user continuously browsing the internet.

In the Application Metrics corresponding to an HTTP application, users can observe two sets of metrics:

• One corresponding to requests transmitted from the client to the server
• Another corresponding to responses transmitted from the server to the client

The HTTP Application Type in NetSim provides the following user-configurable properties:

HTTP generally uses TCP in the transport layer. However, it can also run over UDP.  

Parameters:

HTTP Request Inter Arrival Time (Seconds) - The source node will generate a request after every interval as specified for this parameter. As per the above example, a request packet will be generated for every 1 second. 

HTTP Page Count - This parameter specifies the number of pages that the server response will contain. As per the above example, the response will comprise of one page per request.

HTTP Page Size - This parameter specifies the size of each page that the server sends. If the page size is set to 20000 Bytes, it will be broken down into 14 Segments, since the maximum segment size is 1460 in the case of TCP.

Example:

To model a request-response application where there is one response per each request generated at an interval of 5 seconds the HTTP application can be customized as shown below:

As per the settings above, a request will be sent every 5 seconds and there will be only one response. Since the page size is not greater than TCP MSS (1460 Bytes) it will not be segmented further.