FWNS: A framework for web-based network simulation

Many of today's communication network systems are built using off-the-shelf components offered by third party manufacturers. The diversity in the available components has made the task of design and analysis of different network topologies and various configurations of network components, complicated. To alleviate these problems and to addresses the associated issues, a web-based framework for modeling and simulating computer networks was developed. Using the framework, a designer can explore design alternatives by constructing and analyzing configurations of the design using components offered by different researchers and manufacturers. The motivation for this design is to extend the framework to active network simulations. The framework should provide a flexible and robust environment for selecting the optimal solution set from a large and complex solution space. This paper presents the issues involved in the design and development of a framework for web-based network simulation (FWNS).