# Computer Network Simulation with ns-3:
## 6 Results
### Rq1  
We wanted to address different side of this research question, basically to help the researchers when they must choose a network simulation tool and help to evaluate if ns-3 is a good choice. To achieve this goal, we examined the fields of application in which ns-3 was most used, both the application field, intended as topic, and specific network technology applied, and also as specific problem addressed.  
Table 13 summarizes the information extracted from the papers that are related to this question.  
Results reported in Table 13 suggest that the most of the application domains in networking are covered, with a (unsurprising) peak for ordinary networking, which is anyway not prominent, followed by VANET (Vehicle Ad Hoc Networks), MANET (Mobile Ad Hoc Networks) and common Mobile Networks on similar positions (see Figure 5). The lowest percentage of application, corresponding to WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks), yet a popular application field, may be due to the fact that support for energy management, which is of paramount importance in this subdomain, is still under development, and quite novel as a topic in the literature per se, and to the fact that the implementation of the simulation stack for typical real-world configuration is recent and still to be completed: anyway, the aggregation of all wireless networking related subdomains (WSN, Wireless Networks and Mobile Networks) that share the most of the low layers of the ISO/OSI stack, constitutes more than one third of all papers. The flexibility of the tool is witnessed by the composition of the group of papers labeled as \"others\", as it includes very peculiar and specialistic domains such as Delay Tolerant Network, Named Data Network, Optical wireless, SDN, Visible Light Communication (VLC), while domains that are still emerging as autonomous from more general topics have been included in the relevant general topic (e.g., a paper about 5G mobile networks has been reported as belonging to Mobile Networks).  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l l} \hline \hline
**RQ1** & **Which are the Impacted Application Domains?** & & \\ \hline Q1.1 & What kind of network technologies are simulated? & \% & n \\  & MANET & 14\% & 16 \\  & WSN & 8\% & 10 \\  & Wireless Networks & 12\% & 14 \\  & Mobile Networks & 15\% & 18 \\  & Networking & 27\% & 32 \\  & VANET & 17\% & 18 \\  & Other & 7\% & 9 \\ \hline Q1.2 & Which are the related application fields? & & \\ \hline  & Medicine & & \\  & Physics & & \\  & Astronomy & & \\  & Other & & \\ \hline Q1.3 & What kind of problem is addressed? & & \\  & Security & 11\% & 11 \\  & Assessment & 33\% & 34 \\  & Network Protocol & 26\% & 27 \\  & Physical Layer & 6\% & 6 \\  & Performance & 24\% & 24 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 13: RQ1 Results.  
Variety of problems is also rich: anyway, here the analysis shows that the detail of the simulation stack fosters application to network assessment and protocol design, analysis and verification, and minor attention is paid by researchers and practitioners interested into physical layer problems, probably because of the closeness with the telecommunications domain, that also has proper specific tools and simulation support capturing physical issues in deeper details (see Figure 6).  
Unfortunately, the analysis did not provide enough information to answer Q1.2 with a significant level of details, as the most of the papers were not especially focusing on specific application fields that were not implicitly stated in the application domain.  
Figure 5: RQ1–Q1.1.