Book excerpt: NS-2 is an open-source discrete event network simulator which is widely used by both the research community as well as by the people involved in the standardization protocols of IETF. The goal of this book is twofold: on one hand to learn how to use the NS-2 simulator, and on the other hand, to become acquainted with and to understand the operation of some of the simulated objects using NS-2 simulations. The book is intended to help students, engineers or researchers who need not have much background in programming or who want to learn through simple examples how to analyse some simulated objects using NS-2. Simulations may differ from each other in many aspects: the applications, topologies, parameters of network objects (links, nodes) and protocols used, etc. The first chapter is a general introduction to the book, where the importance of NS-2 as a tool for a good comprehension of networks and protocols is stated. In the next chapters we present special topics as TCP, RED, etc., using NS-2 as a tool for better understanding the protocols. We provide in the appendices a review of Random Variables and Confidence Intervals, as well as a first sketch for using the new NS-3 simulator. Table of Contents: Introduction / NS-2 Simulator Preliminaries / How to work with trace files / Description and simulation of TCP/IP / Routing and network dynamics / RED: Random Early Discard / Differentiated Services / Mobile Networks and Wireless Local Area Networks / Classical queueing models / Tcl and C++ linkage