“One of the more interesting and rewarding activities of the
network administrator involves the planning and design of a
brand-new network and the selection and configuration of network
applications to run across it. Network design inevitably involves
compromise, trading off one characteristic against another. Common
trade-offs are link bandwidth against cost, or latency against
loss, or bandwidth against latency.”
“NISTNet is a software package developed by Mark Carson of
the North American National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) that allows network designers, application developers, and
network researchers to pretty accurately emulate the performance
conditions presented by a variety of TCP/IP networks and network
paths.”
“NISTNet replaces the normal Linux IP forwarding mechanism with
one that allows the network administrator to set and control the
levels of each of a number of key network behaviors. These
behaviors include datagram loss, datagram delay, delay variation,
and the maximum available bandwidth in the forward and backward
directions. Real networks display each of these characteristics.”
… NISTNet allows each of these conditions to be intentionally
introduced into an otherwise healthy network connection to allow
administrators to emulate larger, more complex networks and observe
the resulting behavior of network protocols and applications.”