REAL is a simulator for studying the dynamic behaviour of flow and congestion control schemes in packet switch data networks. It provides users with a way of specifying such networks and to observe their behavior. Source code is provided so that interested users can modify the simulator to their own purposes.The simulator takes as input a scenario, which is a description of network topology, protocols, workload and control parameters. It produces as output statistics such as the number of packets sent by each source of data, the queueing delay at each queueing point, the number of dropped and retransmitted packets and other similar information.
Version 4.5 is also available at http://www.cs.cornell/edu/home/skeshav/real/REAL4.5.tar.gz
An older version, REAL 4.0, is available via anonymous ftp at ftp://ftp.research.att.com as dist/qos/REAL.tar.Z. Check the first link for new versions, updates etc.
The ASCII versions of the user's manual and programmer's manual are here. The PostScript versions of the user's manual and programmer's manual are also here.
An early description of REAL is in Computer Science Department Technical Report 88/472, UC Berkeley, 1988. It gives an overview of REAL and some examples of network analysis using REAL.
REAL is based on a modified version of the NEST 2.5 simulation testbed from Columbia University.
REAL 4.0 has been ported to i386/FreeBSD 2.0.5 platform. Click here to get the patches to REAL.
Similarly, REAL 4.0 has been ported to Linux (Red Hat release). Click here to get the patches to REAL. Cheryl Pope (cheryl@cs.adelaide.edu.au) provided the Linux patches above, and has also ported REAL 5.0 to Linux. You can get the REAL patches for Linux from her web page at http://www.cs.adelaide.edu.au/users/cheryl. Be sure to get the right version (there's one patch for REAL 4 and one patch for REAL 5). Follow the directions on the web page (two lines) then follow the normal REAL installation instructions.
Send mail about REAL to real@minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au and it will be passed on to all members of the mailing list.
The mailing list is archived, and you can search through the old articles here.
REAL is based on a modified version of the NEST 2.5 simulation testbed from Columbia University. NEST is Copyright (c) 1988 Columbia University. NEST, a Network Simulation Testbed, was written by Alex Dupuy. Direct technical questions regarding NEST to dupuy@cs.columbia.edu and questions regarding NEST distribution to jed@cs.columbia.edu.