Prem Gopalan: Click/active nets

[Eddie Kohler]

Dude!!

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Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 11:51:46 -0500 (EST)
From: Prem Gopalan <gopalan at purdue.edu>
X-Sender: gopalan at herald.cc.purdue.edu
To: eddietwo at lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Click/active nets

Hi Eddie:
	Attached below is our previous correspondence. I have started on
my thesis and Im using Click to build an Active Networking scheme in the
Linux Kernel. Specifically I have

1. Added a new Element 'Template' to Click that can encapsulate any new
element and can dynamically change the processing code(depending on
requests from active packets) by instantiating new elements at runtime. 
For this ofcourse, I had to use linux kernel module loading and add
language constructs like
		
	var::Template<Checkpaint(1)>; 

This works fine now but Im yet to fully rid of minor bugs. Im trying to
get the basic mechanism up first.

2. A user can choose to route a particular class of active packets to a
ControlThread that is started as another kernel_thread. This grabs packets
from Click and exports 'active flow' interfaces to user processes. As of
now, I have implemented this thread and I am experimenting with WaveVideo
to study the feasibility and performance. I will be implementing a
user-level library that allows access to such active flows.

Both (1) and (2) aim to provide dynamically changeable modules in the
Click router and Active processing of packets. 

I would like to hear some comments from you in this regard and if Im
headed in a viable direction. Since Im working alone on this project I do
not have opportunities for brain-storming sessions here and Im sort of
dependent on you to let me know if something is radically wrong in this
picture. Im vaguely in the direction of implementing a Video-conferencing
utility that would use this Active Platform to dynamically scale video
streams depending on user's preferences and based on congestion levels in
the router. Im confident with both kernel level coding and click code
right now and any suggestions/criticism;) would greatly speed up my work. 
Thanks for your attention.

- -Prem.
(Masters stud, CS dept, Purdue univ)


> I'm in the process of choosing my master's thesis topic and I would like
> to know if i can work on Click. I presume I need to obtain your consent
> before I can use it as part of my thesis. If in addition, you have
> certain recommendations for extensions to click or networking/OS issues
> that could  be worked on using Click I would be very much interested in
> knowing.Hopefully I'm not troubling you much.

You're not troubling me at all! I'd love it if you worked on Click for
your master's thesis. Obviously, I'd expect you to be honest -- your
master's thesis should be new. As for what extensions or networking/OS
issues, I'll give this some thought and get back to you. Also, who is
supervising your master's thesis? Maybe they could help you decide, or we
all could talk about projects over email.

On another note, if you felt like it, we would love to integrate your code 
back into the mainline Click distribution (with credit, of course). Would
you be interested?

love,
ed







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