We will simulate a very simple network by having a process correspond to a node in the network, and files correspond to channels in the network.

We will have at most 10 nodes in the network, nodes 0 , 1, 2, . . . , 9, or LESS, not all nodes need to be present.

Each process (i.e. node) is going to be given the following arguments

1. id of this node (i.e., a number from 0 to 9)
2. the duration, in seconds, that the node should run before it terminates
3. the destination id of a process to which the transport protocol should send data
4. a string of arbitrary text which the transport layer will send to the destination
5. the starting time for the transport layer (explained much later below)
6. a list of id's of neighbors of the process

We will have a single program foo.java which has the code for a node. Since we have multiple nodes, we will run the same program multiple times, in parallel. The only difference between each of the copies of the program running in parallel are the arguments to the program.

For example, assume I have two programs, A and B, and I want to run them at the same time. At the Unix prompt >, I would type the following

> A &
> B &

By typing the & we are putting the program in the "background", i.e., the program runs in the background and you can keep typing things at the terminal. Therefore, A and B are running in parallel at the same time.

Again, let foo be your program that represents a node. The arguments of the program are as follows foo 3 100 5 "this is a message" 40 2 1

The following would execute the program foo, and the first argument is the id of the node (3), the second is the number of seconds the process will run (100), followed by the destination for this node (5), then the message string "this is a message", then the time at which the transport layer begins, and the last arguments is a list of neighbors (i.e. 2 and 1 are neighbors of 3)