Good evening

I think OPNET is more useful than other program for student labs. OPNET was found to be a better platform that can help to integrate a complete communication node with a different access broadband model. OPNET can provide a platform to create and test an analytic and practical video, voice and Internet model. It can also provide the ability to integrate the model into a different environment.

I will recommend OPNET as compared to NS2 due to availability of Graphical User Interface (GUI) in it. It is more laborious for undergraduate students to work with NS2, as there is no GUI available & they have to learn TcL as well. 

i am using CISCO paket tracer because it has basic things and easy to use

I think the best network simulator is the packet tracer.

ns2 can be one of teh best options and alwzs best recommend in academia

Your question does not have a straight forward answer. When it comes to modelling Physical layer behavior, I think Matlab has no rivals. It is also very simple to use. If you intend to model MAC layer and above, then OPNET is way better than NS-2 because of the excellent documentation, ease of use, availability of GUI, technical support etc. NS-2 has very bad documentation but it is open source which is its biggest advantage. In my experience, students who do not have excellent programming skills have a lot of difficulty coding in NS-2.

I would recommend to use both Matlab and OPNET to cover physical layer and well as the rest of the layers. Also you can interface both of the simulators to get the best of both. However, if you do not have OPNET Modeller and your institution does not intend to pay for it (even with the academic license, you are required to pay for the technical support), then you can consider NS-2 and NS-3.

OPNET is quite expensive for commercial usage but there are also free

licenses for educational purposes

We can extract all the details from NS-2 trace files...... so NS-2 is the best choice...NS-2 is difficult for the beginners...by practice will become a EXPERT  

Thanks to all of you colleagues your answer really helpful.... 

I think  OPNET  is the lucky program it  has more than one vote also as some of you mention that OPNET come with  Graphical User Interface (GUI) in it. It is more laborious for undergraduate , also free licenses for educational purposes.

Good evening

I think OPNET is more useful than other program for student labs. OPNET was found to be a better platform that can help to integrate a complete communication node with a different access broadband model. OPNET can provide a platform to create and test an analytic and practical video, voice and Internet model. It can also provide the ability to integrate the model into a different environment.

Packet tracer is suitable for building toplogy .

NS2 if you want to change protocols (it is for senior students & researcher)

I will recommend Packet tracer  suitable for students and compatible with windows OS .

it has friendly user interface make it useful for teaching ...

I too recommend NS2 is user friendly 

I recommend Qualnet simulator, it is easy and user friendly

Ns2 will be really hard for the student

It depends what kind of simulation you will do. If you just need to configure network topology and analyse the network traffic, the Packet tracer and the Wireshark will help you. However, if you want to develop or analyze the behavior of network protocols such as routing, etc., I suggest the NS2. If you need to work with DTN networks use the ONE simulator. For sensor networks maybe the OMNeT++.

NS2 is most used Network Simulator. There are other simulators such as OMNETPP, OPNET Modeller, SenSim etc,

NS2 or OPNET

I think it depends on the subject, for example, OPNET, packet Tracker suitable for teaching some of the labs.

I highly recommend NS2

GNS-3

NS2 or MATLAB which is useful for multi-purpose. 

OPNET is good one and its tutorials are also available... 

If your students have a good background in C/C++, NS2 is a good choice.

NS2 and GLOMOSIM will be better choice

We use Riverbed OPNET Modeler in the Lab to do student assignment and exercises supplementing network design, modelling and performance evaluation.  

I think NetSim (http://tetcos.com/) is the best tool for this.

An excellent lab manual with experiments is available at http://tetcos.com/download.html

and videos are available at https://www.youtube.com/user/Tetcos/videos

I would also recommend NetSim (http://tetcos.com/). 

The network lab practicals manual is very well written and covers all important technologies. And students can easily learn from the videos as well on how to complete the experiments.

OPNET is easy to implement.

NetSim from Tetcos, is probably the most popular tool in UK for lab experimentation and research

Attached is a lab experiment manual for teaching networks using simulation that may be useful for professors teaching this course.

Some useful experiments

• Understand working of ARP, and IP forwarding within a LAN and across a router
• Simulate and study the spanning tree protocol
• Understand the working of Connection Establishmen in TCP
• Appreciate the mathematical modelling of TCP and understand the fundamental relationship between packet loss probability and TCP performance
• Study how throughput and error of a Wireless LAN network changes as the distance between the Access Point and the wireless nodes is varied
• Estimate the capacity of a IEEE 802.11 WLAN Network and compare the same against simulation
• Understand the working of Slow start and Congestion avoidance (Old Tahoe), Fast Retransmit (Tahoe) and Fast Recovery (Reno) Congestion Control Algorithms in TCP
• Understand how channel selection can improve performance of a Wi-Fi network
• Plot the characteristic curve of throughput versus offered traffic for a Pure and Slotted ALOHA system
• Study the working and routing table formation of Routing Information Protocol (RIP) and Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
• M/D/1 Queuing
• Quality of Service (QoS) in 802.11e based WLANs
• Study the hidden node problem in WLAN
• Analyze the performance of FIFO, Priority and WFQ Queuing Disciplines
• Study how call blocking probability varies as the load on a GSM network is continuously increased
• Study the 802.15.4 SuperFrame Structure and analyze the effect of SuperFrame order on throughput
• In 80.22, analyze how the allocation of frequency spectrum to the Primary and Secondary User affects throughput
• Simulate and study LTE Handover procedure
• Understand the working of LTE Device to Device Communication
• Introduction and working of Internet of Things (IoT)
• Understanding VLAN operation in L2 and L3 Switches
• Understanding Access and Trunk Links in VLANs
• Understanding Public IP Address & NAT (Network Address Translation)
• Understand the working of basic networking commands (Ping, Route Add/Delete/Print, ACL)

We are currently using Riverbed (OPNET) Modeler to teach my Advanced Network Technologies (level 7) course. From next semester we will be using OMNET++ to teach the same course because of open source platform.

We use NetSim for our Under graduate and Post Graduate Networking labs