Subject: [manet] New release of iNSpect available! A Visualization Tool for MANET Simulations with ns-2

From: Peter Ebinger <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:07:27 +0200

Dear all,

a new release of iNSpect is available at
http://www.igd.fraunhofer.de/igd-a8/en/projects/mobsec/inspect/. The
focus of the new release was a major architectural change to improve the
flexibility, the robustness and the efficiency of the tool.

iNSpect is a Visualization Tool for MANET Simulations with ns-2. It
takes log files (so called trace files) created by the common open
source network simulator ns2 and creates a visual presentation of the
simulation data.

A user can play a simulation (continuously move along the simulation
time axis), halt it, jump to a specific simulation time and activate or
deactivate more detailed data presentation features. iNSpect provides
also the means to take screenshots or record movies. These movies can be
shown using common media players independently of iNSpect and are
therefore useful for presentations.

The focus of iNSpect's visualization is to present movement and data
transaction of mobile nodes in MANETs in a clearer way then this has
been possible with former tools.

Best regards,
Peter Ebinger and Fatih Gey

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Background and Application Areas

iNSpect was originally written by Neil Mushell and Stuart Kurkowski at
Toilers Research Group at the Colorado School of Mines (USA) and was
published in 2004. In April 2005 iNSpect version 3.3 has been released.
Subsequent development began by Fatih Gey and Peter Ebinger at the
Security Technology Department of the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer
Graphics Research IGD in Darmstadt (Germany). In late 2005 the
development of iNSpect at the Colorado School of Mines by Neil Mushell
and Stuart Kurkowski was stopped.

The focus of the current developments is major architectural changes to
improve the flexibility, the robustness and the efficiency of the tool.
Due to these changes, several modules had to be rewritten from scratch
with the result, that the current version actually has less features
than former versions. However, as a result the new iNSpect version is
easily extendable and offers a wide range of possibilities for
attachments and for adding new features or expanding the existing ones.
Features that are missing at the moment are not meant to be abandoned;
they will probably be re-implemented in future releases.

Documentation

There is a User Manual and a Developers Guide available for iNSpect.
- User Manual: The user manual describes how to configure and use
iNSpect. The manual presents all functions and features that are
currently available.
[http://www.igd.fraunhofer.de/igd-a8/en/projects/mobsec/inspect/iNSpect_UserManual.pdf]
- Developers Guide: The developers guide describes the internals of
iNSpect and how it can be extended.
[http://www.igd.fraunhofer.de/igd-a8/en/projects/mobsec/inspect/iNSpect_DevelopersGuide.pdf]

Licensing

You are welcome to download and use the iNSpect code free of charge
under GNU General Public License, Version 2
[http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt]. We only ask you to keep the
copyright notices that any published research from using this code
includes a reference to the initial technical report about iNSpect:
            o S. Kurkowski, T. Camp, and M. Colagrosso,
              A Visualization and Animation Tool for NS-2 Wireless
Simulations: iNSpect, Technical Report MCS-04-03, The Colorado School of
Mines, June 2004. [PDF]

Download

iNSpect was implemented and compiled using gcc compiler version 4.0 and
below, so far it does not work with any compiler version newer than that.
- inspect-allinone-3.4-20070531.tgz (size: 2.4 MB)
[http://www.igd.fraunhofer.de/igd-a8/en/projects/mobsec/inspect/inspect-allinone-3.4-20070531.tgz]
- inspect-3.4-20070531.tgz (size: 314 kB)
[http://www.igd.fraunhofer.de/igd-a8/en/projects/mobsec/inspect/inspect-3.4-20070531.tgz]

Mailing List

We set up a public mailing list for discussions related to iNSpect. The
target audience are developers and users. Please also send bug reports
to this mailing list. We'll do our best to answer questions posted to
the list and to provide a fix for a bug as soon as possible.

Subscribe to the inspect mailing list by sending a mail to
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Please leave the mail's subject line blank. A few moments later you will
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post messages to mail address inspect[at]igd.fraunhofer.de.

Contact:

inspect[at]igd.fraunhofer.de

Peter Ebinger
Fraunhofer-Institut für Graphische Datenverarbeitung IGD
E-Mail: [email-masked]

Fatih Gey
Fraunhofer-Institut für Graphische Datenverarbeitung IGD
E-Mail: [email-masked]

-- 
   _______________
|   |   |_|_|_|_|  Fraunhofer-Institut für Graphische Datenverarbeitung
|___|___|_|_|_|_|
|   |   |_|_|_|_|  Department Security Technology
|___|___|_|_|_|_|
|  .   _    _   |  Peter Ebinger     [email-masked]
|  |  / _  | \  |  Fraunhoferstr. 5  phone +49 6151-155-531
|  |  \_/  |_/  |  64283 Darmstadt   fax   +49 6151-155-499
|               |  Deutschland       http://www.igd.fraunhofer.de/igd-a8
~---------------~

This email is digitally signed - Root-CA: https://pki.fraunhofer.de/

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---

From: Tracy Camp <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:28:59 -0600

For those unaware of the iNSpect software being discussed here,  
please see:
	http://toilers.mines.edu/Public/NsInspect

Peter and Fatih have done a nice job of re-implementing parts of our  
iNSpect tool (version 3.3). While their iNSPect tool does not include  
all the features that we offer with our iNSPect tool, they have  
definitely improved upon our original code structure.

I do, however, want to clarify a few items on this "new release of  
iNSpect".

- While it is true that development of new features in iNSpect is not  
on-going at the Colorado School of Mines, we do provide maintenance  
and support for our iNSpect software.

- Peter and Fatih state that "iNSpect was implemented and compiled  
using gcc compiler version 4.0 and below, so far it does not work  
with any compiler version newer than that." This is true of our  
version 3.3 of iNSpect and Peter/Fatih's version of iNSpect. We have  
recently released version 3.4 of iNSpect, which does compile with gcc  
4.+.

Peter and I are talking about ways to help ensure confusion is  
avoided between this 'new release of iNSpect'  (from Peter and Fatih)  
and the original version of iNSpect (from Toilers).

Peter/Fatih: thanks for improving the code structure of a very  
popular visualization tool.

Tracy

Tracy Camp, Ph.D.
Director of Toilers
Dept. of Math. & Computer Sciences (MCS) Colorado School of Mines
303/384-2184
email: [email-masked]
Homepage: http://www.mines.edu/fs_home/tcamp/
Research Group Webpage: http://toilers.mines.edu