Cross-simulator integration: ns3 as a network simulation back-end for Alchemist

Innovative distributed systems are often studied with the aid of simulation, especially in the case of large scale and situated systems. One of the key aspects of distributed systems is the presence of a set of nodes which must communicate with each other in order to perform their collective task. Consequently, the behaviour of the network plays a key role in determining how the distributed system will act as a whole, but support for realistic simulation of network communication may not be available in simulators that focus on higher-level phenomena, such as the execution of a program on the nodes belonging to a distributed system. Network simulation is usually performed with dedicated simulators which, on the other hand, mostly focus on low-level aspects, such as the behaviour of the physical channels and of the network protocols. The present works aims at filling this gap between high-level distributed system simulation and low-level network simulation by creating a cross-simulator integration between Alchemist, a simulator for large scale situated distributed systems, and ns3, a network simulator, which has been exploited in order to give Alchemist the ability to accurately simulate the network interactions between the nodes. Finally, the whole system has been tested to demonstrate how different network setups can affect the execution of a program in a distributed system.