Hybrid packet/fluid flow network simulation

Packet level discrete event network simulators use an event to model the movement of each packet in the network. This results in accurate models, but requires that many events are executed to simulate large, high bandwidth networks. Fluid-based network simulators abstract the model to consider only changes in rates of traffic flows. This can result in large performance advantages, though information about the individual packets is lost making this approach inappropriate for many simulation and emulation studies. We present a hybrid model in which packet flows and fluid flows coexist and interact. This enables studies to be performed with background traffic modelled using fluid flows and foreground traffic modelled at the packet level. Results presented show up to 20 times speedup using this technique. Accuracy is within 4% for latency and 15% for jitter in many cases.