Network simulation enhancing network management in real-time

This research investigates the application of network simulation to enhance network management in real-time. Its focus is on ad hoc wireless networks as needed for future public safety emergency response, homeland security, and future combat system networks where the network requirements and topology are rapidly changing. The network simulation is used to analyze user satisfaction with the network and to enable real-time what-if studies that show what the user satisfaction will be if the network is reconfigured in various ways. User satisfaction as a metric is defined to correspond to the impact of the network performance on the ability of the network user to complete their public safety, security or military functions. The current network size of interest is up to ad hoc wireless 500 nodes, a typical target load for a single network manager. At the same time, the approach is made scalable to use manager of managers approach to scale to larger networks. The article reports on the approach and performance results.