Method simulating data traffic on network in accordance with a client/sewer paradigm

A method of simulating data traffic being transmitted over a network among a plurality of nodes interconnected by the network, the data traffic comprising a plurality of conversations among the plurality of nodes, one or more of the plurality of nodes being a client node and one or more of the plurality of nodes being a server node, said method comprising the steps of:

• providing a model representative of the network;
• characterizing one or more of the plurality of conversations as a series of one or more request/response interactions, each of the one or more interactions comprising transmission of a request message from one of the one or more client nodes to one of the one or more server nodes, and wherein none, some or all of the one or more interactions further comprise transmission of a response message associated with the request message, the associated response message transmitted from the one server node back to the one client node in response to receiving the request message;
• and
• generating data representative of the one or more interactions of each of the characterized conversations, said step of generating further comprising the steps of:
• inputting the generated data for each of the interactions into the network model to determine when the associated response message of each of the interactions having one are received by the one client;
• and
• when the request message of one of the interactions is dependent on the one client node's receipt of the response message associated with a previously generated request message, delaying the inputting of the data representative of the dependent interaction into the network model until the response message associated with the previously generated request message is received by the one client node as determined by the network model.