Model-Based Concurrency Analysis of Network Simulations

To achieve highest performance, parallel simulation of networks on modern hardware architectures depends on large numbers of independent computational tasks. However, the properties determining a network model's concurrency are still not well understood. In this paper, we propose an analytical model that enables concurrency estimations based on model knowledge and on statistics gathered from sequential simulation runs. In contrast to an automated concurrency analysis of event traces, the analytical approach enables insights into the relationship between the topology and communication patterns of the simulated network, and the resulting concurrency. We consider three fundamentally different network models as implemented in the network simulators PeerSim and ns-3: a large-scale application-layer peer-to-peer network, IP-based routing in a fixed topology, and a wireless ad-hoc network. For each model, we conduct an in-depth analysis, exposing the relationships between model characteristics and concurrency. Our analysis is validated by comparing estimated concurrency values to reference results of a trace-based analysis. The identification of key factors for concurrency forms a step towards a classification of network models according to their potential for parallelization.