Nowadays, we identify different approaches trying to solve the complex problem of VANET simulation accurrately. First, the most widely used, the desingner could use a traffic simulator for generating realistic vehicular mobility traces that will be used as the input for a mobile ad hoc network simulator. Second, the designer could use a specially-designed VANET simulator tool. Finally, some MANET application programming frameworks allows the developer to test the applications via simulations.

The first approach used for simulating VANETs lies in using road traffic simulators capable of generating mobility traces, which are later evaluated by an existing specific MANET simulator. The public availability of many of these MANET simulators is the main motivation for the success of this approach. However, it has a major drawback: the majority of VANET applications implies that vehicles react to the network events and this behavior is diffcult to be modeled with this scheme. The most research community adopt ns-2 (network simulator) for MANET simulating, even there are more network simulators as OMNet, ns-3 or OPNET.

VanetMobiSim/Ns-2 VANET simulator based on coupling VanetMobiSim (traffic simulator) and ns-2.

The number of road traffic simulators which generate MANET traces is large: the most comprehensive ones are VanetMobiSim and SUMO, however we can also Find Videlio, RoadSim, CARISMA, VISSIM, MMTS, CORSIM/TSIS,  SSM/TSM, and STRAW. Finally, TraCI, TraNS, and MOVE are simulators which combine the SUMO mobility model generator and ns-2 simulator in a unique tool. The vehicles reaction to the network events can be modeled by using these approaches.