What are the machine requirements for NIST Net?
Essentially, NIST Net needs enough kernel memory to store any delayed packets, and enough processor speed such that the additional overhead it introduces doesn’t skew its delay properties too noticeably. (Currently, NIST Net does not account for its own overhead in computing delay factors, under the assumption this is negligible.) As a couple of data points, NIST Net has been run successfully on a 25/50 MHz 486 with 16M of memory doing emulation on 10Mb Ethernet, and on a 200MHz Pentium with 32M of memory doing emulation on 100Mb Ethernet. Measured per-packet overhead for the first configuration was around 28 microseconds, and for the second, around 5-7 microseconds. Both values are well under the usual minimum inter-packet times on these networks, so should not have any (inherent) adverse effect on packet handling. (The emulator reports average observed overhead through the HITIOCTL_GLOBALSTATS ioctl.) The overhead for the new alpha is currently a bit higher, as are its memory require
