A Game Engine-Based Visualizer for ns-3 Simulations

ns-3 is an extremely popular and still evolving simulation platform that enables flexible experimentation for virtually any modern networking and communication systems. One aspect that needs improvement, however, is its visualization utility. The best-known visualizer for ns-3 is NetAnim, but this event-based animator does not provide the most efficient visualization service. In this paper, we discuss a new, frame-based visualizer for ns-3 called UVNS. An interesting feature of the visualizer is that it utilizes Unity, a cross-platform game engine. Owing to the breakneck speed of game technology advancement, the speed and visual components of the engine are highly optimized. By exploiting them, UVNS can greatly facilitate the animation of ns-3 simulation log both in performance and in presentation quality.