FEASIBILITY STUDY

2.1 Introduction
In the feasibility study we check whether the SNiP simulator project can be developed within the available software and hardware technologies. We also check whether the system to be developed is cost effective and whether it satisfies all the proposed requirements.
During feasibility study various constraints such as time constraints, budgetary constraints, resource constraints etc are studied.
The network simulator accounts for great amount of feasibility since the actual behavior of the system is simulated in a stand alone system which allows us to test the characteristics of the network by giving various inputs and analyzing the respective outputs in a short time and less amount of people involved
The project is developed in Visual C# under .NET framework using Visual Studio 2005. The Visual Studio 2005 facilitates the development of Graphical User Interface (GUI) comprising various forms for different purposes using languages like Visual C#, Visual J#, Visual C++, VB .NET. The software developed in Visual Studio is compatible to run in any newer version of Windows.

2.2 Existing System
Whenever a new system is developed it is either a new product or is a further development of some existing product. There can be some drawback in the existing product. Most of the simulators do not have good user interfaces. Often being command oriented, they demand trained users. Some simulators require a Kernel up gradation which requires reinstallation of the operating systems. It acts as an over head and thus making it less user friendly.


2.3 Proposed System
The SNiP Network Simulator has a good Graphical User Interface. It can be installed and run on windows without any kernel upgradation. SNiP Network simulator attempts to provide real world network simulation. Real world network simulation is associated with the protocols used in real world. It includes TCP/IP, UDP, FTP, etc. SNiP provides a user friendly interface to draw and simulate the topology, playback to view the data transfers, stack trace to view the data transfer of each and every packet transferred. Along with this it also provides graph drawing tool, which can be used to plot the graph giving details about in-throughput, out-throughput, collisions occurred at all the network devices. The real time network simulation tool provides the user exact time required for data transfer for a specified bandwidth and datum under various conditions. The SNiP Network simulator can be used by professionals for studying real world networks, problems encountered, and for educational purposes.

2.4 System Feasibility
This study checks whether the proposed system satisfies all the requirements that are specified in the proposal. The SNiP Network simulator can simulate a variety of networks accurately.

2.4.1 Operational Feasibility
What are the users’ needs and how does a developer system meets them? A user interactive system is provided and the user can build the topology, specify the working environment and put constraints according to the needs.

2.4.2 Technical Feasibility
Technical feasibility is concerned with determining whether it is possible to code the project using the language selected. Visual C# is used and the developer software is Visual Studio 2005.
Visual studio is a toolkit to develop windows based applications. It supports a variety of languages for the software development.
The .NET framework is a completely new model for building systems on the windows family of operating systems.

Features of .NET and Visual Studio
• Full interoperability with existing win32 code: .NET allows invoking raw C based functions from managed code.
• Complete and total language interaction: Unlike classic COM, .NET supports cross language inheritance, cross-language exception handling and cross language debugging. A common runtime engine shared by all .NET aware languages.
• Multithreading: .NET provides multithreading. This allows the software to run modules in parallel.
• Direct access to Windows APIs: .NET provides a direct access to windows APIs. The APIs including the DLL (Dynamic Link Library) functions.
• Visual studio provides GUI design tools for designing the software. It simplifies the overhead of coding to an extent, and helps to reduce the software development time and provides a better user friendly system.

2.4.3 Economical Feasibility
Economical feasibility is used for evaluating the effectiveness of a system. The project does not involve any special hardware other than standard specifications.