Prototyping Network Architectures on a Supercomputer

Architectures for emerging multimedia networks need to be exercised and revised, before they can be implemented on a large network. We have built a platform that supports the evaluation of network architectures. The platform allows us to closely approximate the functional and dynamic behavior of network control systems. By providing support for real-time visualization and interactive emulation, it can be used to study multimedia networks in various scenarios, such as different load patterns, network sizes and management operations. The current implementation runs on a KSR-1 and an SP2 parallel processor, which are connected to a graphics workstation via ATM links. We use the platform in several projects, one of which aims at developing an architecture for manageing multimedia network services.