Simulating Communications Links

I'm wondering if anyone can give me a little advice. I'm fairly new to 
network programming, and completely new to linux, yet it looks like I'm 
going to have to use both for my final year project at university.

The requirement that I've been given is basically to delay and drop packets 
randomly to simulate a communications link. The probability of dropping or 
delaying a packet will depend on certain variables set by a user (in a GUI 
if possible) indicating the length of the physical link and the % of network 
load to network capacity. My project supervisor wants these delayed and 
dropped packets to occur at the MAC level, and someone suggested using 
ebtables which I'd never heard of before.

I'm just wondering how difficult it is to start using ebtables, and how 
difficult would it be to modify it to create random drops/delays?

Hopefully what this will allow, is a user to experience the effects of 
different multiple access schemes, different network loads and different 
link lengths (eg satellite) via a streamed video.

Thanks for any help everyone

Ian W

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