Trace converter has been developed with Free Pascal because Trace graph (ns-2 trace files analyser) is very slow at parsing ns-2 trace files and converting them to it's own format (Trace graph format). Trace graph is written in Matlab which is not suitable for parsing complex files that's why is so slow because each trace file (except wired format) is converted to Trace graph format and saved to "temp" file before loading. Next Trace graph loads the converted "temp" file into memory and because the format after conversion is fixed, the file in Trace graph format is read as fast as Matlab can do it. 

    Conversion to Trace graph format takes over 90% of total file loading time using Trace graph, so to load a file in Trace graph format takes below 10% of the total time. Thanks to Trace converter the conversion to Trace graph format is almost instant (e.g. about one second for a 20MB file), so practically there is only up to 10% of the previous time (when conversion was done by Trace graph) to wait for the trace file to be loaded. See comparison table below. Trace converter is at least 80 TIMES FASTER than Trace graph 2.05 and at least 180 TIMES FASTER than Trace graph 2.02 at converting ns-2 trace files to Trace graph format. In case of trace files without IP addresses Trace converter is at least 150 TIMES FASTER than Trace graph 2.05 and over 300 TIMES FASTER than Trace graph 2.02. Trace converter has very low memory usage thanks to file streaming, so it's very fast, especially at converting large trace files.

    Once a trace file is converted by the converter into Trace graph format it can be read by Trace graph. Trace converter also uses 1/3 less disc space during IP addresses conversion because it does IPs + trace file conversion in one pass where Trace graph does it in two passes. Trace converter is a console application, so it works in text mode (e.g. on Linux it doesn't require X-Windows).

    Trace converter is also better than Trace graph at IP addresses with node numbers substitution, because Trace converter replaces only these fields, from a trace file, which can be IP addresses. Trace graph does only simple strings substitutions which can result in a bad output file, because for example there can be a packet number equal 2048 and the same IP address equal 2048, so after replacing 2048 with node number (e.g. 3), the packet number will be 3 instead of 2048 after conversion, which is not correct and the analysis results will be wrong. Trace converter will replace only the IP, so packet number will remain equal 2048. That's why Trace converter is better (and much faster) at IPs conversion than Trace graph.

Supported ns-2 trace file formats (also with hexadecimal node numbers and IP addresses):

• old wireless

• new trace

• wired-old wireless

• wired-new trace.

Example speed comparison between Trace converter and Trace graph

(conversion of a 25MB trace file in wired-new trace format with hexadecimal node numbers and IP addresses,

 all times are in seconds, tests were run on a Celeron 1100MHz processor):

 

	Trace converter 1.00	Trace graph 2.02	Trace graph 2.04
IP addresses extraction	1.30 sec.	457 sec.	95 sec.
IP addresses to node numbers conversion time + trace file conversion time	1.78 sec.	325 sec.	140 sec.

Above example shows that user needs to wait only above a second instead of few minutes to convert a trace file!

In the result of the above conversion example a 9.1MB file in Trace graph format was created.

Then the file was loaded by Trace graph. The converted file loading times were:

 

Trace graph 2.02	Trace graph 2.04
39 sec.	11 sec.

Above table shows that Trace graph 2.04 was over 3x faster than Trace graph 2.02 at loading the converted trace file in Trace graph format.

DOWNLOAD Trace converter 1.01 binaries for Linux and Windows and source code (.pas files) to compile with Free Pascal

Contact: Jaroslaw Malek

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