Installing NetSimulyzer 3D Visualization Module with ns-3.37

NetSimulyzer ns-3 Add-on Module.

In fact, ‘NetSimulyzer’ consists of two parts. One is the actual 3D visualization tool and the other is an ns-3 companion module. Both are named as NetSimulyzer — so it will make some confusion during installation.

This article will only explain the installation of ‘NetSimulyzer ns-3 companion module’ — which is used to generate 3D traces needed for recreating the 3D network scenarios

This article is about installing ‘NetSimulyzer ns-3 companion module’ with ns-3.37 on Debian 11 operating system.

The following article explains the installation of ns-3.37 under Debian 11.

Cmake based ns-3.37 install in Debian 11 chroot Environment

The following article explains the installation of the ‘NetSimulyzer 3D visualization tool’ under Debian 11/Ubuntu Linux variants which is going to be used to test the ns-3 NetSimulyzer based 3D simulation and visualization.

Installing NetSimulyzer 3D Visualization Tool under Debian/Ubuntu

Installation Requirements

(Preferably) a Debian/Ubuntu or any Linux variant.
A C++ 17 compliant compiler
Minimum supported compilers:
GCC 7.3.0
or Clang 6.0.0
CMake 3.13 or greater
A graphics card supporting OpenGL 3.3
Qt 5.12
Optional: Doxygen
This ns-3 NetSimulyzer module installation will require a pre-installed ns-3 (in this case ns-3.37).
And most preferably, a computer/laptop with a higher-end CPU, and GPU and with a LOT of memory. (Even though, this ns-3-cmake compile process can be done on a computer with decent hardware, compiling NetSimulyzer Tool part that will be used to visualize the 3D simulation outputs of ns-3 will consume a lot of CPU and memory resources and may just ‘hang’ or ‘crash’ your machine)

Installation

Now it will start compile the code and show the following output during the start of the process:

The following terminal output shows the simulation outputs of ‘mobility-buildings-example’.

In fact, this simulation is not creating any particular console output – but it will create a 3D trace output file called ‘netsimulyzer-mobility-buildings-example.json’. Further, that .jason file ‘netsimulyzer-mobility-buildings-example.json’ will be available under ns-3.37 folder. Now check the output of ns-3.37 folder.

Step 5:Visualizing the 3D output of the Simulation

Run the NetSimulyzer visualization tool that was installed earlier (as explained in the article https://www.projectguideline.com/installing-netsimulyzer-3d-visualization-tool-under-debian-ubuntu/)

$ cd /home/your_home/NetSimulyzer

$ ./build/netsimulyzer

This will open the NetSimulyzer user interface from which you can load and play .jason format output 3D trace files.

Load and visualize a 3D Network Scenario (that was previously created during Step 5)

In this example, the output file of the ns-3 example simulation ‘netsimulyzer-mobility-buildings-example.cc’ – ‘netsimulyzer-mobility-buildings-example.json’ has been loaded in the NetSimulyzer visualization tool. By clicking Node 0, we can ‘look’ the scenario from that node’s camera perspective.