Comparison of Software Simulation and Network Testbed of DDoS Attacks for IPv4 and IPv6 Networks

Abstract

DDoS attacks have now become a common threat that every organization connected to the Internet must face. Scientists are trying to come up with new proposals for protection against DDoS attacks, for which they need to test individual defense mechanisms. One of the testing options is a software simulator such as the OMNeT++ simulator. An INET framework containing a standard library of communication protocols and easily enabling the simulation of various communication network scenarios, such as UDP protocols, TCP, IPv4, IPv6, MANET routing protocols, etc., can extend the network OMNeT++ simulator. The aim of the presented research was to find out whether the software tool OMNeT++ together with the INET framework is suitable for simulating DDoS attacks from the point of view of the impact on the computer network. The article presents a comparison of a real DDoS attack based on a testbed environment over UDP and ICMP protocol with simulated DDoS attacks in the OMNeT++ software simulator. In addition to comparing different protocols such as UDP and ICMP, experiments were performed and different IP protocols were compared, and attacks were performed on both IPv4 and IPv6 networks.