NetLogo vs. Repast Simphony?
I would like to simulate some scenarios using the multiagent paradigm, and it seems NetLogo and Repast are the most popular tools for that.
I'd like to know if anyone has had any experience with either one and could tell me more about them? For example, I've noticed that there is a fluxogram-like modeling option for Repast, but I believe it is rather limited. I've looked around the tutorials and documentation in the official site, and the documentation seems to be lacking. While there are some examples with it, I'd say extending it to simulate an ambient which it has not been specifically prepared to seems like an unreachable goal at the moment, despite Repast obviously being very robust and apparently able to handle it, given enough familiarity with it.
On the other hand, NetLogo has more examples and overall I've liked it more for its simplicity, but it seems to be more focused on the simulating propagation of diseases or similar models. I've found a programming book teaching Logo, so I figure it'd be easier to get started with it too.
Currently, I am thinking of simulating botnets and IDSes as multiagents. The problem, however, is that I would have to abstract the network and transport layers to an extent to be able to do it, as well as generate traffic between the nodes. Repast is apparently more fitting for this, but given its complexity and lack of documentation I'm thinking of using NetLogo. While there are some examples of NetLogo with traditional applications (ex: Tetris or Pac-Man), I'm not sure about how appropriate it'd be for that.
Answer
I have a webpage with a couple dozed netlogo multiagent simulations. I use netlogo for teaching and I have found that, once you get past the learning curve, you can develop simulations amazingly fast. Stuff that would take you 80 man-hours in other so-called agent environments (Jade, Repast, which are really mostly just programming libraries) can be done in 2 hours.
On the other hand, netlogo is not really good for simulations that require immense amount of details, like say simulating a network all the way from TCP/IP to HTTP. That would just require large amounts of code, regardless of programming language, and netlogo currently sucks if your program ends up being more that 10 pages long. Having said that, most people would be amazed at what you can get done in 10 pages of netlogo code.