Brian Linkletter's website is one of the best portal if you want to learn network simulation and emulation. From the provided list, I think the most promising

Brian Linkletter's website is one of the best portal if you want to learn network simulation and emulation. From the provided list, I think the most promising and realistic open source network simulator and emulator is Mininet due to its lightweight approach capable of running off-the-shelf Linux OS and software. In addition it has thriving eco-system that made it unique, accessible and prime for wide adoption for examples: a) It's currently actively being used to simulate and emulate smart city project by its original author to improve urban networking [1],[2]. b) It has open learning materials resources from open source book (Mininet-WiFi) and open lab instructions manual (Mininet-SDN) [3],[4]. c) Its lightweight feature enabling it to simulate very large number of nodes using the nested containers capability as demonstrated by extensions created by third party simulation tools namely NestedNet and ComNetsEmu [5],[6],[7],[8]. [1] SigComm 2022 Cosmos Testbed Tutorial: https://wiki.cosmos-lab.org/wiki/Workshops/SigComm2022 https://wiki.cosmos-lab.org/wiki/Workshops/SigComm2022 [2] Reconfigurable topology testbeds: A new approach to optical system experiments: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1068520023000226 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S106852002... [3] Mininet Wi-Fi book: https://github.com/ramonfontes/mn-wifi-ebook https://github.com/ramonfontes/mn-wifi-ebook [4] SDN Labs using Mininet manual: http://ce.sc.edu/cyberinfra/workshops/Material/SDN/SDN_Labs.pdf http://ce.sc.edu/cyberinfra/workshops/Material/SDN/SDN_Labs.... [5] Network Virtualization and Emulation using Docker, OpenvSwitch and Mininet-based Link Emulation: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/985/ https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/985/ [6] NestedNet: A Container-based Prototyping Tool for Hierarchical Software Defined Networks: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9244858 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9244858 [7] ComNetsEmu: A Lightweight Emulator: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B978012820488700027X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B97801... [8] A virtual emulator/testbed designed for the book: Computing in Communication Networks: From Theory to Practice (2020): https://git.comnets.net/public-repo/comnetsemu https://git.comnets.net/public-repo/comnetsemu