You should try to use the surfxml_update.pl script that can be found
<a href="http://gforge.inria.fr/plugins/scmcvs/cvsweb.php/contrib/platform_generation/?cvsroot=cvsroot%2Fsimgrid">here</a>.
-\subsection faq_bugrepport So I've found a bug in SimGrid. How to repport it?
+\subsection faq_surf_network_latency I get weird timings when I play with the latencies.
+
+OK, first of all, remember that units should be Bytes, Flops and
+Seconds. If you don't use such units, some SimGrid constants (e.g. the
+SG_TCP_CTE_GAMMA constant used in most network models) won't have the
+right unit and you'll end up with weird results.
+
+Here is what happens with a single transfer of size L on a link
+(bw,lat) when nothing else happens.
+
+\verbatim
+0-----lat--------------------------------------------------t
+|-----|**** real_bw =min(bw,SG_TCP_CTE_GAMMA/(2*lat)) *****|
+\endverbatim
+
+In more complex situations, this min is the solution of a complex
+max-min linear system. Have a look
+<a href="http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/simgrid-devel/2006-April/thread.html">here</a>
+and read the two threads "Bug in SURF?" and "Surf bug not
+fixed?". You'll have a few other examples of such computations. You
+can also read "A Network Model for Simulation of Grid Application" by
+Henri Casanova and Loris Marchal to have all the details. The fact
+that the real_bw is smaller than bw is easy to understand. The fact
+that real_bw is smaller than SG_TCP_CTE_GAMMA/(2*lat) is due to the
+window-based congestion mechanism of TCP. With TCP, you can't exploit
+your huge network capacity if you don't have a good round-trip-time
+because of the acks...
+
+Anyway, what you get is t=lat + L/min(bw,SG_TCP_CTE_GAMMA/(2*lat)).
+
+ * if I you set (bw,lat)=(100 000 000, 0.00001), you get t = 1.00001 (you fully
+use your link)
+ * if I you set (bw,lat)=(100 000 000, 0.0001), you get t = 1.0001 (you're on the
+limit)
+ * if I you set (bw,lat)=(100 000 000, 0.001), you get t = 10.001 (ouch!)
+
+This bound on the effective bandwidth of a flow is not the only thing
+that may make your result be unexpected. For example, two flows
+competing on a saturated link receive an amount of bandwidth inversely
+proportional to their round trip time.
+
+\subsection faq_bugrepport So I've found a bug in SimGrid. How to report it?
We do our best to make sure to hammer away any bugs of SimGrid, but this is
still an academic project so please be patient if/when you find bugs in it.
