Evaluating the Goodness of MANETs Performance Results Obtained With the Ns-2 Simulator

The development of new protocols and applications for Mobile Ad Hoc NETworks (MANET) requires a thorough testing before their deployment in a real environment. Testing is typically based on simulation, even though this might "Over-simplify" the problem thus leading to incorrect results. In this paper, the authors describe Castadiva, a test bed based on low-cost off-the-shelf devices, which is used to test protocols developed for MANETs. Castadiva is completely compatible with the file format used by the ns-2 simulator, so simplifying and allowing a fair comparison between the two systems. They compare the results obtained with Castadiva and the ns-2 network simulator, and demonstrate that the ns2 simulator is a reliable tool for the evaluation of MANETs related proposal.