IoT setup with real nodes

[Matthias Leitner]

Hello,

I'm new to ns-3 and I would like to simulate an IoT system where the devices are running inside a container and the network layer is simulated with ns-3. A possible setup could look as follows:

N1-------------                  ----- N2

                   \               /

                    N3 ------N4

                     /

 N5 ---- N6 ---

              |

            N7

In this example, N1 - N7 are containers, and they should be connected using the 6LoWPAN model of ns-3. In the first step, applications running inside the containers should be able to communicate with any other node in the network.

I already started with the container tutorial of ns-3 and got it working. I was able to set up a simple star topology using the WiFi model. I was reading the ns-3 documentation, looked at the code examples offered by ns-3 (https://code.nsnam.org/index.cgi/ns-3.29/file/d977712d48a0/examples) and searched google/this group, but I'm still not sure about the following:

1) Is it possible to create a topology as shown in the example, where all the nodes are containers and they communicate with each other using 6LoWPAN?

2) If so, do I need to create a separate channel for every connection?

3) Is it possible that nodes join/leave the network during the simulation?

Thanks in advance!