On the Evolution of ndnSIM

Abstract

As a proposed Internet architecture, Named Data Networking (NDN) takes a fundamental departure from today's TCP/IP architecture, thus requiring extensive experimentation and evaluation. To facilitate such experimentation, we have developed ndnSIM, an open-source NDN simulator based on the NS-3 simulation framework. Since its first release in 2012, ndnSIM has gone through five years of active development and integration with the NDN prototype implementations, and has become a popular platform used by hundreds of researchers around the world. This paper presents an overview of the ndnSIM design, the ndnSIM development process, the design tradeoffs, and the reasons behind the design decisions. We also share with the community a number of lessons we have learned in the process.