DiffServ4NS

A 25-year Differentiated Services lineage spanning two network simulators. DiffServ4NS began as a DiffServ (RFC 2474/2475) module for ns-2 — edge + core routers; policers (Token Bucket, srTCM, trTCM, TSW2CM, TSW3CM); droppers (WRED, RIO); schedulers (PQ, WFQ, SFQ, SCFQ, LLQ, WF2Q+) — and is carried forward into an ns-3 QoS substrate (Stratum) that composes DiffServ, L4S, and CAKE on a single edge queue disc.

Originally designed in 2001 for the author's MSc thesis, peer-reviewed at IEEE ISCC 2002, released on SourceForge in 2006, forward-ported to ns-2.35 in 2026, and re-imagined as the ns-3 substrate Stratum. Built using Evaluation-Driven Development — a layered Intent → Structural → Quality spec suite gates every change.

Variants

This repository hosts the whole lineage. Each variant has its own scoped README:

Variant	Status	In this repo	Scoped README
ns-2.29	frozen — 2006 SourceForge release (2001 algorithms on the ns-2.29 API)	src/ns-2.29/	README-ns-2.md
ns-2.35	frozen — 2026 port layer (latent-bug fixes + UDP header correction)	src/ns-2.35/	README-ns-2.md
ns-3	active — QoS substrate composing DiffServ + L4S + CAKE (Stratum)	src/ns-3/	README-ns-3.md

Quick start

ns-3 substrate (the active variant):

git clone https://github.com/digitalities/diffserv4ns.git && cd diffserv4ns
./scripts/fetch-ns3.sh                              # pinned ns-3 + local patches
cd ns3/ns-3-dev
./ns3 configure --enable-tests --enable-examples
./ns3 build diffserv && python3 test.py -s diffserv -v

ns-2 archive (Docker):

./scripts/fetch-ns2-allinone.sh && ./scripts/patch-ns2-diffserv.sh
./scripts/build-ns2-allinone-docker.sh

See docs/REPRODUCIBILITY.md for the full per-scenario reproduction map, and the scoped READMEs above for per-variant detail.

Scholarly context

• ns-3 substrate (2026): Stratum — a QoS substrate composing DiffServ, L4S, and CAKE in ns-3 (this repository's active variant); see README-ns-3.md. The describing paper is under peer review.
• Peer-reviewed reference (2002): Andreozzi, S. Differentiated services: an experimental vs. simulated case study. Proc. IEEE ISCC 2002. doi:10.1109/ISCC.2002.1021705.
• Authoritative design document (2001): Andreozzi, S. DiffServ simulations using the Network Simulator. MSc thesis. Zenodo: 10.5281/zenodo.19662899.
• 25-year provenance chain: LINEAGE.md.

Citation

Machine-readable metadata is in CITATION.cff. The ns-2 archive has its own published Zenodo record (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19665019); the ns-3 substrate's citation and DOI will be added once its paper is published.

Acknowledgements

• Sergio Andreozzi (2001–2006, 2026): original DiffServ4NS author and maintainer.
• Nortel Networks (2000): the ns-2 diffserv module that DiffServ4NS extended (Farhan Shallwani, Jeremy Ethridge, Peter Pieda, Mandeep Baines).
• Xuan Chen, ISI (2001): ns-2 integration of the Nortel module.
• Pasquale Imputato and Stefano Avallone (2016): the ns-3 traffic-control layer this substrate builds on.

License

GPLv2. See LICENSE for the full text.

Copyright (C) 2001–2026 Sergio Andreozzi. Original Nortel Networks DiffServ framework (C) 2000.