Global Routing.

Performs pre-simulation static route computation on a layer-3 IPv4 topology. More...

Classes
class	ns3::CandidateQueue
	A Candidate Queue used in routing calculations. More...
class	ns3::GlobalRouteManager
	A global global router. More...
class	ns3::GlobalRoutingLinkRecord
	A single link record for a link state advertisement. More...
class	ns3::SPFVertex
	Vertex used in shortest path first (SPF) computations. More...

Detailed Description

Performs pre-simulation static route computation on a layer-3 IPv4 topology.

Model

ns-3 global routing performs pre-simulation static route computation on a layer-3 IPv4 topology. The user API from the script level is fairly minimal; once a topology has been constructed and addresses assigned, the user may call ns3::GlobalRouteManager::PopulateRoutingTables() and the simulator will initialize the routing database and set up static unicast forwarding tables for each node.

The model assumes that all nodes on an ns-3 channel are reachable to one another, regardless of whether the nodes can use the channel successfully (in the case of wireless). Therefore, this model should typically be used only on wired topologies. Layer-2 bridge devices are supported. API does not yet exist to control the subset of a topology to which this global static routing is applied.

If the topology changes during the simulation, by default, routing will not adjust. There are two ways to make it adjust.

• Set the attribute Ipv4GlobalRouting::RespondToInterfaceEvents to true
• Manually call the sequence of GlobalRouteManager methods to delete global routes, build global routing database, and initialize routes. There is a helper method that encapsulates this (Ipv4GlobalRoutingHelper::RecomputeRoutingTables())

API and Usage

Users must include ns3/global-route-manager.h header file. After the IPv4 topology has been built and addresses assigned, users call ns3::GlobalRouteManager::PopulateRoutingTables (), prior to the ns3::Simulator::Run() call.

There are two attributes of Ipv4GlobalRouting that govern behavior.

• Ipv4GlobalRouting::RandomEcmpRouting
• Ipv4GlobalRouting::RespondToInterfaceEvents

Implementation

A singleton object, ns3::GlobalRouteManager, builds a global routing database of information about the topology, and executes a Dijkstra Shortest Path First (SPF) algorithm on the topology for each node, and stores the computed routes in each node's IPv4 forwarding table by making use of the routing API in class ns3::Ipv4.

The nodes that export data are those that have had an ns3::GlobalRouter object aggregated to them. The ns3::GlobalRouter can be thought of as a per-node agent that exports topology information to the ns3::GlobalRouteManager. When it comes time to build the global routing database, the list of nodes is iterated and each node with an ns3::GlobalRouter object is asked to export routing information concerning the links to which it is attached.

The format of the data exported conforms to the OSPFv2 standard RFC 2328. In particular, the information is exported in the form of ns3::GlobalLSA objects that semantically match the Link State Advertisements of OSPF.

By using a standard data format for reporting topology, existing OSPF route computation code can be reused, and that is what is done by the ns3::GlobalRouteManager. The main computation functions are ported from the quagga routing suite (http://www.quagga.net).