Free networking research software for linux

Network Simulator (Ns) is a discrete event simulator targeted at networking research. Ns provides substantial support for simulation of TCP, routing, and multicast protocols over wired and wireless (local and satellite) networks.
Ns began as a variant of the REAL network simulator in 1989 and has evolved substantially over the past few years. In 1995 ns development was supported by DARPA through the VINT project at LBL, Xerox PARC, UCB, and USC/ISI.
Currently ns development is support through DARPA with SAMAN and through NSF with CONSER, both in collaboration with other researchers including ACIRI. Ns has always included substantal contributions from other researchers, including wireless code from the UCB Daedelus and CMU Monarch projects and Sun Microsystems.
Enhancements:
- Major updates were made to the PackMime-HTTP HTTP/1.1 and WPAN modules.
- Solaris/Sun C compilation bugs were fixed.

Java Network Stack provides a Java library for research oriented network programming.

Java Network Stack is a library used by the DIMES project to create new internet measurements. It provides a clean API for packet manipulation, send, receive, filter, and analysis. It is a unification of raw socket capabilities, MAC level networkingm, and IPv6 capabilities.

My Network Catalog is an indexing engine that allows Windows shares (or Samba shares) to be bound together over a local network.

My Network Catalog allows an easy centralized search of all the files available over the network.

The Torque Network Library project is a robust, secure, and easy-to-use cross-platform C++ networking API designed for high performance simulations and games.
It features a UDP- based connection architecture with DoS prevention functionality, different types of data guarantee, bit stream compression, server object replication and updating, and a simple, highly space efficient RPC mechanism.
It includes a deterministic application journaling replay function for eliminating hard to find networking bugs.
Main features:
- Portable
- Powerful RPC Support
- Lightweight and efficient - not intended to be a replacement for CORBA.
- Extremely easy to use - two simple macro definitions and youre done.
- No complex wrapper classes to work with - write and call your functions as you normally would, and TNL will take care of the rest.
- Robust UDP-based notification protocol
- Supports fixed or adaptive rate data transfer.
- Arbitrary sized packet window.
- Robust connection handshaking.
- Handles packet loss/out of order delivery.
- Networked Objects
- Instantiation of objects by name or ID.
- IDs are assigned to NetGroups, so that only objects relevant to a connection can be references.
- Event Support
- Unguaranteed, guaranteed unordered, or guaranteed ordered event delivery.
- Notification to the event when it has been received or dropped by a client.
- Ghost Support
- Most-recent state information is transmitted to clienst.
- Scoping of objects to only those clients for which they are relevant - this helps prevent cheating or data sniffing and makes dramatically more effective use of available bandwidth.
- Prioritization of state updates by arbitrary criteria, such as relative velocity, team, ownership, etc.
- Extensible Protocol Architecture
- Easy to extend the protocol, for instance, to transmit player move information with every packet, or add voice support.
- See Torque for examples of additional capabilities that could be added to the protocol.

Understanding computer networks without performing practical experiments is really difficult, not to say it is almost impossible. Unfortunately, setting up a networking lab can be very expensive.

Netkit has been conceived as an environment for setting up and performing networking experiments at low cost and with little effort. It allows to "create" several virtual network devices (full-fledged routers, switches, computers, etc.) that can be easily interconnected in order to form a network on a single PC. Networking equipments are virtual but feature many of the characteristics of the real ones, including the configuration interface.

Netkit exploits open source software (mostly licensed under GPL) and is heavily based on the User Mode Linux (UML) variant of the linux kernel. The purpose of this project is to solve many of the difficulties and technicalities that a user could have in using UML for networking. We offer the users an easy-to-use-and-install package, which at the same time implements effective network emulation. Further, we provide a corpus of teaching material that can be used for courses at different levels.

ResearchMaster project has been designed to make working a little easier. Specifically, the application can be either a storage facility for all of your precious, miscellaneous digital information, or for just some of it. The project began as a way for the author to [1] have a centralized library for all the papers and various snippets he collects, and [2] to have some powerful, built-in support for BibTeX, the LaTeX bibliography system ( The LaTeX bibliography system, as described in the Leslie Lamport book. ISBN 0-201-52983-1).
When the application starts up, it creates a virtual filesystem (vfs) from information contained in records. Each record appends itself under at least one folder in the vfs, and the vfs is represented by a tree-widget system of folders and records. The application is divided into folder controls (left) and record controls (right).
Each record is actually a set of three python dictionaries, stored in a flat ascii text file. The three dictionaries correspond to [1] BibTex information corresponding to the record, [2] Meta information (eg. isbn, call number, url, membership) and [3] an endless notes file. When a record is selected from the tree widget, the corresponding three dictionaries are presented in a three-tabbed notebook widget on the right side of the application.
New records are created via a button on the records toolbar. When you create a new record the application pops a filechooser and you are given the opportunity to import a single file. Perhaps the imported file is a pdf copy of a research paper that you dont want to lose. ResearchMaster is a good place to store it. First, the record and the imported file now have each other. Now you can keep a log of your involvement with the file in the notes portion of the record. The Meta portion of the record contains non-BibTex information, such as which folders the record is a member of. The application accesses the records BibTex information whenever the record has membership within the subtree of a particular folder for which a recursive bibliography is being generated.
Heres a typical example: Say you create a folder for some project. Lets say that after six months your folder now has several subtrees of folders and records, all arranged according to the scheme that happened. Now imagine there are twenty records with BibTex information strewn throughout the projects subtree, side-by-side with other records that dont have BibTex information (notes, whatever). By pushing the Create Bibliography button on the left toolbar the application will produce a perfectly formatted BibTex file with all twenty records.
Each record can be made a member of any folder simply by adding the folders path to the membership list in the Meta portion of the record. The tree widget is dynamically constructed by recursively examining a directory tree (corresponding to the folders of the tree-widget) and the membership list contained in each record. This is done so that we only have one physical copy of each record, despite the fact that the record might show up in fifty different places throughout the tree widget.
The file that gets imported with a record can be any file of any format. You can tell ResearchMaster to launch the file as an argument to any external application, based on the filenames suffix (.gif, .avi, .mpg, .mp3). Then, select the record from the tree, push the launch button (on the records toolbar), and voila! The associated application brings up your file. Thats one feature that makes working a little easier.
Enhancements:
- Small correction was needed on line 1140 of ResearchMaster_wxuser.py, where "researchmaster" needed to be "ReseaerchMaster" for preferences initialization.

zstar Networked 3D project is a free 3D networked application platform.
zstar (z*) Networked 3D project is an extensible, distributed system for 3D application and game development, consisting of an abstract game client (similar in concept to the one that xpilot uses) and a game server to which players connect to play games against other players or alone.
This framework should be suitable for FPS, VR, MUDs, or any application that requires 3D and networking.
Enhancements:
- Added java interfaces for camera/object messages
- Added walk system
- Added ac3d/sgi rgb loading
- Bug fixes
- Bug fixes on the chat
- Added texture cache and object cache.
- Mipmaps are now in for voodoo users.

Network Configurator is a network configuration tool.
Network Configurator is user-level tool that aims to make network configuration more easy. It have command line and GTK+ interface.
Supported network types:
- Ethernet
- PPPoE
- PPTP
- Wi-Fi (no WEP and WPA for now)
- dialup