Implementation of a layer 2 bridge in ns-3

The main objective of this poster is to show the key points of the ns-3 software architecture in order to modify its internal functionality (e.g. creation of a new module). It is intended for those researchers that want to use ns-3 for their simulations and need more than a simple user level platform. The work presented in here is the first stage of a larger project which objective is to build a layer-2 simulation platform (concretely IEEE 802.1). This first step includes the implementation of the basic functionalities of a layer-2 bridge. The simulation platform requirements are: (a) extensibility to improve the simulator with added functionalities; (b) scalability to simulate large network topologies; (c) flexibility to execute massive simulation runs in order to deal with a complete sensitivity analysis; and (d) reliability that will be achieved with an exhaustive control of single simulation events. ns-3 has been selected as the base of the simulation. It is a discrete-event simulator based on a modular object-oriented architecture with very intuituve classes for networking researchers (e.g. a node works with the usual OSI layers).