[Hi Everyone] Ns3Visualizer – Qt-based PPDU Timeline & PHY/MAC Activity Visualization Tool for ns-3

[zhangkai]

Hello ns-3 community,

My name is Kevin Zhang, and I am an undergraduate student working on network simulation and visualization tools. I would like to share an open-source visualization tool I developed for ns-3 simulations: Ns3Visualizer.

Ns3Visualizer is a Qt-based GUI application designed to provide interactive, time-based visualization of PHY/MAC layer activities, especially PPDU-level events.

Key features:
• PPDU timeline visualization
• PHY/MAC transmission activity tracking
• Throughput curve plotting
• Interactive zoom and inspection
• Compatible with modern ns-3 versions

The goal of this tool is to improve post-simulation analysis and provide more intuitive insight into wireless protocol behavior at the PHY/MAC layer. It may also help users who are less familiar with the ns-3 source code better understand simulation behavior.

The project is open-source and available here:
https://github.com/z14212638-eng/Ns3-based-Visualization

Documentation and tutorials are included in the repository.

Feedback, suggestions, and potential collaboration are warmly welcome.

Best regards,
Kevin Zhang

[Charles Pandian]

Hello Kevin Zhang,

If you can add a few screenshots (in GitHub as well as here) to demonstrate the visualization of a simple ns-3 network scenario (wired and wireless) under your visualiser, then it will give a good introduction to your visualization tool.

Charles Pandian

[zhangkai]

Hi,

Thank you for your reminder — you are absolutely right. I forgot to include demonstrations here and on GitHub, and that was my mistake. I have now updated the repository with several demo examples.

I would like to present a classic scenario:
examples/wireless/wifi-txop-aggregation.cc

The screenshot below shows the result after running this example.(A short GIF for demo is also attached)
This tool captures all transmitted PPDUs and presents them in multiple forms, including:PPDU timeline visualization,Throughput plots and Terminal output logs

The UI interaction has also been carefully designed (although it still needs further improvement).

After selecting a scenario and clicking [Apply], the simulation starts and automatically switches to the timeline page.

In DIY mode, users can drag nodes inside the building layout (or manually set their positions),adjust the placement of access points and stations and configure simulation parameters via the configuration page

For most wireless scenarios, the Ns3Visualizer model (contrib/Ns3Visualizer) can sniff PPDUs and forward them to the GUI for visualization.

I believe this tool may be helpful for research and teaching purposes. It could also provide users who are not very familiar with ns-3 or C++ with a more intuitive way to “see” network simulations.

It is still under development and requires further improvements and bug fixing. I sincerely welcome feedback, suggestions, and issue reports here or on GitHub.

GitHub repository:
https://github.com/z14212638-eng/Ns3-based-Visualization

[Charles Pandian]

Thanks for the updates.

Suggestion:  If the black background is not controlled by the theme,  then I think making the background as white may improve the visibility.

For example, the visibility of the following network scenario is not so good.



If you try to visualize it with a white background, then you may understand.

If it is controlled by theme, then you may ignore this suggestion.

Charles Pandian.

[zhangkai]

Dear Charles
Thanks for that ,I'm going to fix it and collect more suggestions about ui-style

[Alberto Gallegos]

When your project is completed, I recommend to propose it to integration into the 
ns-3 App store. Otherwise, it is likely to get lost in the sands of time.

Some additional work might be necessary for integration into the app store, so just read the contribution
guidelines.

Regards

Al.

[zhangkai]

Hi Al.,

Thank you for the suggestion.

It was actually quite a surprise that you noticed my tool from the mailing list (laugh). I think integrating it into the ns-3 App Store is a very good idea. Over the past few months, I have been continuously polishing the tool based on feedback and requirements from my advisor and colleagues in the lab.

(I am also planning to submit a paper to this year's ICNS3 introducing the tool and its design.)

After the project becomes more mature, I will propose it for integration into the ns-3 App Store as well.  

Regards,
Kevin

[Alberto Gallegos]

We are always watching :D, even though sometimes is not possible to respond
or there is nothing to respond.

I am also submitting a paper myself for ICNS3 in a somewhat related topic to visualizers.

On the lines of integrating with the app store, I recommend to prepare the submission now so you can 
actually use the app store link and post into the paper if it gets accepted (during the submission of the camera ready version).
 It is a more permanent link compared to just posting a link to a personal repository, and in my opinion increase visibility of the project.

Regards,

Al.

[zhangkai]

Thank you very much! That is indeed a very good point, and I will consider start preparing the App Store submission earlier.

It is also great to hear that you are submitting a paper to ICNS3 as well.  I believe your work will definitely provide valuable guidance for future visualization-related research in ns-3. 

Looking forward to it. (:D)

Regards,
Kevin

[zhangkai]

Hi Alberto,

Thank you for the suggestions regarding the ns-3 app store integration.

I have now updated the repository structure to better follow the app store guidelines (module layout, documentation, examples, tests, etc.).

Here is the repo: <https://github.com/z14212638-eng/Ns3-based-Visualization>

 If you have time, could you please take a quick look and let me know whether there are still any major issues or missing requirements for app store compatibility?

Also, I would like to ask who would be the appropriate person to contact to further proceed with the app submission/integration process.

Thank you again for your help and suggestions.

Regards,

Kevin

[Alberto Gallegos]

Hi Kevin, 

I took a look over the documentation front page. 

The documentation and installation details seems complete.

I was just kept wondering what was the difference with other visualizers like NetSimulyzer, but I guess that is what the 
paper is for. 

Other things to watch for are: Make sure that the Pipieline CI passes completely, I think that is 

a requirement submission to place it in the app store. Also, we might have a CI Pipeline for Github (cant confirm that), but

we usually use GitLab, so I would recommend to do the submission using that instead. As the contribution

website states, you also need to make a logo that will be needed for the submission. People will be 

very resilient to take a look at the code unless it passes the pipeline first.

Images should be inside the doc folder in a folder named "figures" to be aligned to other models. 

Here are other suggestions that do not reflect on my thoughts about the quality of your work but are Pet peeves of mine:

- In the screenshots, many of the fields seem to have excessive space , do you really need 1/3 of the window to 

 write a channel or the frequency? This issue seems to be present in all the screenshots.
Fitting the fields to an appropriate size might make your visualizer more visually pleasing

and look more professional.

- I could not help to notice that your model is called WifiViz, but the user interface (the visualizer on itself) that could intentionally work without 

ns-3 is merely called "ui". I would recommend a more distinctive name for this element. On that note of names, WifiViz while appropriate under

the current scope, does not let much room for future extensions. What if somebody else want to take your visualizer and extend it for use with 

another type of device... well tough cookie, this already called WifiViz so any extension will require to change the name of the visualizer on itself.

- As the maintainer of the  Lr-wpan model, I cannot help to think... well... here is another WiFi visualizer, but we still do not have other visualizers

for Lr-Wpan, 6lowPan, CSMA, and other supported devices on ns-3. I know , I know these devices are probably outside your research scope....but just saying.

Support for other devices other than the usual LTE or WiFi would be nice. If this type of extensions are not possible at this time, at the very least
I would be interested to know if and how other technologies could be integrated with your visualizer for future works. For example, is the visualizer

flexible enough to allow adding other types of devices ?, or is the design too monolithic and made for WiFi  hence it does not allow easy extensions without heavy refactorization?

After your project is ready for submission, contact  webmaster[ at ] nsnam.org as described in 
https://www.nsnam.org/docs/contributing/html/external.html

I hope it helps to improve your project

Best Regards,

Alberto

[zhangkai]

Hi Alberto,

Thanks a lot for your guidance and feedback, I really appreciate it.

Compared to other visualizers such as NetSimulyzer and PyViz, this project is quite different, and yes, I will definitely discuss these differences in the paper.

Your advice regarding the UI design is very practical and helpful. Adjusting the size and layout of graphical components is always a difficult problem for designers. I am still somewhat unsure about the best balance. Previously, I experimented with a more compact layout, but it made the parameter configuration components difficult to read on smaller displays. Because of that, I intentionally increased the size of the UI elements. However, the excessive blank and unused space you pointed out is indeed something that needs improvement, and your suggestion is very valuable for my future work.

You also mentioned that the name of the visualizer, "WiFiViz", may not be suitable if developers want to extend the tool to other modules. I completely agree with your opinion, and I hope I can eventually overcome this limitation. I would be very happy to build visualization tools for other modules such as Lr-Wpan, 6LoWPAN, and others.

The main challenge is that there is no perfect solution for every requirement, especially across different modules. Different technologies use different transmission units: PPDU for WiFi, PSDU/MAC Frame for Lr-Wpan, Transport Block or Slot for 5G NR, and so on. Because of these differences, it is difficult for a single visualizer to satisfy all requirements equally well.

I would be very happy to work with you on a visualizer for Lr-Wpan. However, it is a bit unfortunate that I may need to create a new visualizer instead of extending WiFiViz directly, since the current UI is heavily specialized for WiFi scenarios.

Perhaps there is a better solution. In another discussion, I found that some developers would prefer to design their own UI. In that case, it might be better to provide a general data exporting system instead. I was wondering whether it would be possible to design a data transformer that converts module-specific transmission units into a unified metadata representation. I am not sure whether this idea is practical yet, but I think it could be a promising direction for visualization.

Or perhaps I should be more realistic (laugh :D). If there is a real need for an Lr-Wpan visualizer, I would be willing to study the related technologies and try to build one, then continue improving it based on your feedback.

Best regards,
Kevin

[Alberto Gallegos]

Dear Kevin,

I am glad you found some of the suggestions useful.

As for the challenge of making visualizers that work across different transmission units, in my opinion that is the key point.
We should be thinking on improving ns-3 capabilities to enable a more simple way to create visualizers, instead of taking the 

same approach to making very un-flexible visualizers for a single type of device, is too much development waste remaking 

parsers with the same objective over and over again.

As for creating visualizers for other devices, do not worry. I was just making a point that this was the ns-3 network simulator

not the ns-3 WiFi/LTE simulator but people tend to forget. Regardless, I agree that you should make tools that satisfy YOUR needs. 

So if you are doing research for WiFi, of course making a visualizer only for WiFi makes sense, but as I said, I would recommend 

a flexible design that allows future extension, I think in a way NetSimulyzer does provide that even if it does not support Lr-WPAN.

In my case, you won't be seeing me  using NetSimulyzer or apparently any other ns-3 visualizer, precisely due to the lack of decent support for Lr-WPAN which are the devices

I work with (NetAnim and PyViz does support it in a primitive way though but they are hardly useful).

In regards to providing a general way to use visualizers... well that is in a way my proposal for this year in ICNS3...let's see how its goes.
If we both get accepted, we can talk about it in the conference.

Finally, in regards to "if there is a need for Lr-WPAN visualizer", I think there is. In fact, I need one since there is nothing decent out there.

I would argue that there is more need for Lr-WPAN that has no good visualizers than WiFi which already has a handful, but maybe you know

better since you probably explore a comparison of your proposal with existing visualizers' capabilities.

Regards,

Alberto

[zhangkai]

Dear Alberto,

I fully agree that creating separate parsers for different modules is not an efficient use of time. It may be worthwhile for us to discuss this during the conference and explore the design of a more general visualization framework that could support multiple ns-3 modules.

Regarding an Lr-WPAN visualizer, I would like to spend some time studying the module and its typical use cases before starting the implementation. Alternatively, do you think it would be better to wait until after our conference discussion so that the design can align with any broader visualization plans?

In the meantime, could you tell me what visualization features or requirements you have in mind for Lr-WPAN? I would also appreciate it if you could provide some example simulation scripts and let me know what kinds of data, events, or metrics you would like to trace and visualize.

Regards,

Kevin

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[Gabriel Ferreira]

I'm just going to leave this here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3pV6FHvcgM

[z14212638]

That is surprising and unbelievable......but does it really works with ns-3?

From: "Gabriel Ferreira"<gabriel...@gmail.com>

Date: Sat, Jun 6, 2026, 08:46

Subject: Re: [Hi Everyone] Ns3Visualizer – Qt-based PPDU Timeline & PHY/MAC Activity Visualization Tool for ns-3

To: "ns-3-users"<ns-3-...@googlegroups.com>

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ns-3-users/b8c219f3-7e88-4dac-836b-68e213ed96e9n%40googlegroups.com.

[Gabriel Ferreira]

Not now, but who knows when. Just food for thought. 

[Alberto Gallegos]

Dear Kevin,

It's hard to tell what would be some nice requirements for a visualizer with lr-wpan support, as I do not use much visualizers.

In that regard, since you already made one you probably know better than me.

That being said, here are some things from the top of my head:

Probably, a visualizer with lr-wpan support needs some typical stuff like:

Throughput visualization, PDR, delay measurements,  visualization of ucst, bcst in different channels same as any other 

wireless system.

More specific stuff unique to lr-wpan:

- Difference between end devices and coordinators

- Indicators of whether or not a devices is associated and to whom is associated.

- visualization of short and extended address of all devices

- different visual representation between becon mode and non beacon mode.

- Dissector support of packets or at very least be able to tell the type of packet type apart

- Filters by packet types

Also lr-wpan always gets bundle in visualizers with Zigbee, so right there, visualization options increase a lot if you also add

zigbee support (routing visualization, endponts, applications, routes, etc, etc)

I would not get too fixated on specific details for lr-wpan...... at least some basic visual decent support for lr-wpan would be nice.

NetSimulyzer does not support it (correct me if I am wrong), NetAnim does.... but NetAnim barely does anything for any device type.

PyViz did not supported lr-wpan devices until I added support a couple of month ago. But then again, PyViz barely does the minimum

and its temperamental as hell to install, half of Pyviz does not work due to outdated libraries.

Anyways....that is my take.