
Dear All,					31st March 2004.

I am pleased to announce the next release of my cnet network simulator.
cnet v2.0.10 enables experimentation with various data-link layer,
network layer, routing and transport layer networking protocols in networks
consisting of any combination of point-to-point links and Ethernet segments.
cnet has been specifically developed for, and is used in, undergraduate
computer networking courses taken by thousands of students worldwide.

The full distribution (about 1.1MB) includes all source code, Makefiles,
documentation, sub-directories for each of the supported operating
systems, and a few representative protocol examples, and is freely
available under the GPL from:

	http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/cnet/

A quick overview, including some screenshots, may be found at:

	http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/cnet/introduction.html


The main improvements of this version are:

- Added support for Ethernet segments as well as the traditional WAN
  point-to-point links.  Ethernet NICs have the standard 6-byte hardware
  addresses;  built-in cnet functions help set addresses on links,
  convert NIC addresses to and from character strings, and set NICs into
  promiscuous mode.

- All times and rates are now maintained in microseconds (not milliseconds).
  This is supported by using 64-bit integers wherever necessary, including
  cnet's internally managed statistics.  cnet provides built-in to support
  64-bit integer arithmetic, comparison, and conversion for platforms/compilers
  not supporting 64-bit integers directly.

- Nodes may now receive command-line arguments when they are rebooted.
  Typical uses are to specify the node's role, default routes, etc.

- The frames of 2-node point-to-point simulations may now be animated.
  This greatly assists students in their understanding and debugging
  of their first Data-Link layer protocols.

- Fixes for some well-hidden bugs.

- Improved documentation, with some much-requested protocol walkthroughs
  of a few example protocols.


This announcement will hopefully arrive in time for you to consider
cnet's new features for the forthcoming semester (well, in Australia and
New Zealand at least).

A big thanks to all those who continue to contribute to cnet with your
ideas and bug finding.  Since being cited in Stalling's "Data and Computer
Communications", 6th ed., the interest has been a bit overwhelming, though
I'd love cnet to receive mention in Tanenbaum's forthcoming 4th ed. too.

As ever, feedback about your use of cnet in your teaching is welcomed.

_______________________________________________________________________________
                  Dr Chris McDonald   EMAIL:  chris@csse.uwa.edu.au
         School of Computer Science & Software Engineering
The University of Western Australia   WWW: http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/~chris
   Crawley, Western Australia, 6009   PH: +61 8 9380 2533, FAX: +61 8 9380 1089
