Developing a User-Centric Website for the Network Simulation Bridge

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hi! Thanks for stopping by.

In this first blog post of a series of three, I’d like to introduce myself, my mentor, and my project.

My name is Avantika Pandey — a third-year Computer Science student at UIET, Panjab University Chandigarh, with a background in full-stack web development and open source contribution. This summer, I am contributing to the NSB User-Centric Website project as part of Google Summer of Code 2026 under UC OSPO. I am very grateful to be mentored by Harikrishna Kuttivelil. Feel free to read my accepted GSoC proposal and browse the wireframe prototype I built before writing the proposal.

The Problem

The Network Simulation Bridge (NSB) is a middleware layer that connects real application code to network simulators — letting developers and researchers test distributed systems under controlled network conditions (specific latency, packet loss, topology) without needing real infrastructure. NSB is technically solid. Its Python and C++ API documentation is detailed and well-written.

But here is the catch: none of that is easy to find.

After reading every file in the NSB repository and tracing the full setup sequence from scratch as a first-time user, I identified a single root cause behind multiple surface-level problems: there is no guided path from “I just found NSB” to “I have a working example running.” No quickstart, no architecture diagram, undocumented config fields, and eight prerequisites before a single line of user code runs. The result: getting NSB running for the first time takes an estimated 3–4 hours. The goal of this project is to bring that down to 15 minutes.

The Project

My project builds a complete 7-section public website for NSB: Home → Get Started → Quickstart → Docs → Tutorials → Contribute → Community. Every design decision is guided by one principle: First Success First — get the user to a working NSB message exchange before asking them to understand anything. Once they have seen it work, documentation stops being an obstacle and starts being a resource.

A few key decisions that shape the project:

The Quickstart ships with a pre-built mock simulator so a first-time user can observe a full message round-trip without writing a single line of simulator code — both endpoints provided, out of the box.
Simulator integration (NS-3, OMNeT++) is deliberately deferred to the Tutorials section, introduced after the user already has a working foundation.
Windows users get a dedicated WSL2 tab on the Get Started page with step-by-step instructions.
The Docs section fully annotates every config.yaml field, adds a troubleshooting guide with 20+ error/fix pairs, and unifies the Python and C++ API reference into one searchable hub.

Expected Deliverables

Complete NSB website — all 7 sections, publicly deployed, responsive on desktop and mobile
Quickstart onboarding — platform-specific install guide (macOS, Linux, Windows WSL2) with a clear 15-minute path to first message exchange
Structured documentation hub — full config.yaml reference, unified Python/C++ API docs, architecture and message flow diagrams in Mermaid
Tutorial series — Beginner, Intermediate (user builds their own mock with NetworkX), and Advanced (NS-3 / OMNeT++ integration)
Contributor infrastructure — CONTRIBUTING.md, Good First Issues list, PR/issue templates
Usability validation report — measured time-to-first-success with real first-time users

Stay tuned for the midterm and final posts — there is a lot to build, and I am excited to share how it unfolds!

If you find this work interesting, feel free to connect on LinkedIn or follow along on GitHub. Great to meet the UC OSPO community — thanks for reading!

gsoc26 | UCSC OSPO

Developing a User-Centric Website for the Network Simulation Bridge

The Problem

The Project

Expected Deliverables