Compiling MTCP kernel for ns-3-dce

This page describes the changes which should be made to the MTCP kernel and to ns-3-linux to successfully compile ns-3-dce with support for MTCP.

• Download Linux kernel version 2.6.36 and the corresponding MTCP patch.

• In the ns-3-linux folder, extract the Linux kernel to the folder net-next-2.6.

• Now to tell ns-3-linux that we have downloaded the kernel separately, do touch .download.ts.

• Patching the kernel:
  1. Patch it to work with ns-3-linux: The process will fail, as not all the patches are applicable to the present kernel. The change to dmaengine.h has already been made in the kernel. Make sure to say No when a reversed patch is detected when you do:
     • make setup
     • touch .patch.ts
     to indicate that we have patched the kernel and we do not need other patches. After that, rerun
     • make setup
     so that it completes the other tasks (making a soft-link for the sim folder)

  2. The MTCP patch: To apply the patch (assuming that it has been copied to the same folder which contains net-next-2.6) do the following:
     • cd net-next-2.6
     • patch -p1 < ../patch_mptcp_2.6.36_06
     This should succeed without errors.

• Configuring the kernel:
  1. Add at bottom of the Makefile (for ns-3-linux, not the Kernel) the following:
     

             gconfig: 
                 make ARCH=sim gconfig
     

     This allows us to edit the configuration of the kernel to enable MTCP functionality with some more ease.
  2. Add the following to the bottom of the file sim/Kconfig:

             config EXPERIMENTAL
                 def_bool y
     

     The EXPERIMENTAL option needs to be set to y for the MTCP options to be visible.
  3. Run make defconfig to prepare the initial configuration.
  4. Run make gconfig to customize. Note that the steps here are a subset of the steps shown at the link because some of the options are turned off by default for the ns-3-linux kernel.
     • disable syn cookies Networking support->Networking options->TCP/IP networking->IP: TCP syncookie support (SYN_COOKIES)
     • enable MTCP protocol Networking support->Networking options->TCP/IP networking->MTCP protocol (MTCP)
     • enable the built-in MPTCP path manager (MTCP_PM)
     • enable coupled congestion control Networking support->Networking options->TCP: advanced congestion control->MPTCP COUPLED CONGESTION CONTROL.
     • select it as the Default TCP congestion control
     • disable IPv6 (this causes problems in running the examples from dce) Networking support->Networking options->TCP/IP networking->The IPv6 protocol

  5. Overwrite the default configuration:
     • cp net-next-2.6/.config config

• Finally, compile the kernel:
  • make
  This should make a file libnet-next-2.6.so. This is the file which is used with the examples with ns-3-dce-old.

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