PORTLAND, Ore. — A scalable emulation and simulation software environment for next-generation wireless technologies aimed at both civilian and military networks will be announced today by Scalable Network Technologies Inc. (Los Angeles). Building on the Global Mobile Information Systems (GloMo) Program simulator developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), Scalable Network Technologies' QualNet and Exata software simulators accurately model the behavior and operations, respectively, of 3G and 4G mobile communications networks, including quality-of-service, software defined radios and network-centric services.

By improving the predictability of wireless, mobile net-centric services, QualNet and Exata seek to enable developers to "what if" new network topologies and then try them out before building expensive hardware infrastructures.

QualNet and Exata integrate design, visualization and analysis software toolsets into a real-time simulation environment capable of modeling thousands of devices in simultaneous use. A parallel processing architecture enables the software simulators to be scaled up by merely adding more cores to execute its code. Rather than using inaccurate abstractions, QualNet and Exata directly emulate networks and the hierarchy of layers, from the physical layer, Media Access Control (MAC), link layer, network layer, Internet protocol (IP) layer, transport layer and user applications, such as Email, VoIP, web browsing and video servers.

Scalable Network Technologies claims that users interacting with the software simulator get the same responses as they do from real networks, and with the same response times. Using open standard interfaces, QualNet and Exata also accurately recreate channel environment effects, including device behaviors, communication links, transmitters/antennas, terrain and atmospheric effects, and human interactions.

QualNet is available now, and Exata will be available in the fourth quarter of 2008 on both sequential and parallel processing environments running Unix, Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.