How am I (wanting to) use CLICK.. QUESTIONS

[Gilbert Healton]

I have been asked to provide a solution to a problem for someone. Most of 
it is something I’ve done many times before. The only area of difficulty 
for me is the router portion of the solution despite my weakness on 
routers, the guy wants to use me (and I would LOVE to know more about 
routers) as I understand his greater problems.

While working on a hack phase-one solution, I’ve just stumbled across 
your Click site. It appears that Click may be a wonderful long term 
solution for me. I’ve downloaded software, documentation, etc., compiled, 
and have been plowing through it and have some questions. But first, my 
router problem:

There are to be many router boxes running Red Hat connected to special 
class C sub-nets running near 10MB/sec. The first delivery only needs one 
class C subnet
 later on it should be able to drive more subnets (current 
hardware limit is 5). Each subnet will have up to 200 hosts, or even 
smaller subnets, on it (first delivery can get by with 30 to 40 hosts).

1.Host addresses on the subnets can be static or assigned by DHCP (first 
delivery can be DHCP only).
2.For security each user needs to log on the network (special web cgi-bin 
on router
 I’ve written or borrowed stuff like this before) before they 
can reach the outside world.
3.The cgi-bin needs to enable and/or disable hosts by IP address as they 
login and logoff.  Hosts not logged in can not get out onto the Linux 
router. If it helps, I’ll expect to know the Ethernet MAC address of each 
host. Limiting by MAC numbers rather than login is also possible for 
phase-one.
4.Each host is only to get some percentage of the bandwidth. A shaper 
type solution is ideal here. At first, only the “download” direction for 
the subnets needs to be shaped, but later a common limit for traffic 
going both ways is needed on a per-host basis.

Questions (some may be stupid as I haven’t read everything yet):

1.Can CLICK shape bandwidth by individual IP addresses on the subnet? 
(Ugly solutions are acceptable for first delivery). Each address may have 
a different bandwidth percentage.
2.Can I use CLICK to ensure packets are not routed on the LAN of the host 
is not logged on?
3.Is Click in serious use anywhere? Especially with the 2.4 kernel 
patches, or would 2.2 be better at this time?
4.Are there sample configurations? the documentation I’ve seen so far 
either describes individual CLICK elements, etc., or theory, but does not 
contain a number of PRACTICAL router configurations to study and compare. 
Shapers in particular.

My background and offer to help your project:
I’ve been a serious programmer for many years at many levels, and if I 
wind up using CLICK, any enhancements, etc., I make would be contributed 
to you (thinking I may need to write a shaper element that allows for 
common bandwidth across push/pulls to limit absolute bandwidth). I also 
usually leave a documentation trail behind me about things I learn.

If I can deliver the entire phase-one delivery I get my money, and would 
not mind sharing a bit of it with someone that helps me get my first 
delivery up and running on time, once I get my money up and running on 
time.  The first delivery can be a crude lash up job
 it is the later 
ones that need to get fancy (if the first one works well enough it is 
understood that the press of time will prevent a great solution). 
Switching to CLICK at this late date may cause a bit of a panic this 
forthcoming week, but I am willing to go through it for a better 
solutions.

It's late and I hope I've made sense here.

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ghealton at exit109.com   http://www.exit109.com/~ghealton/
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        Computers are like air conditioners:
              they don't work well when Windows are left open