# $Id: README,v 1.2 2000/06/11 18:29:05 gjhurlbu Exp $

All comments, bug reports would be appreciated.



License Crap:
=============

	As far as I am concerned, if you want to hack on this, you are free
to so at your pleasure.  It took me a total of about 5 hours or so to get it to 
where it is now...  The only thing I ask is that if you hack on it and get
something useful, please send me a diff (context diff would be best) of 
what you have changed so I can incorporate it in the master version.  Oh, and
tell me what revision number your baseline version was (defined as rev at the
top of diald-top.c).


Intallation:
============

Read the INSTALL file for instructions on how to install diald-top.



Concept:
========

The concept behind diald-top is rather simple.  I got sick of trying to read
a monitor pipe flying by on an extra VC, so I lusted after a more user
friendly interface.  As I like the interface in top, I decided to start with
that kind of look.  Fortunately, the designers of diald made my life rather
easy by making the monitor pipe with an easy structure to implement. 

I used ncurses for the interface to make my life simpler.  This also has the
additional effect of making this possible to run on any type of terminal.  I
have a VC4404 hooked up and this works great on it.  As ncurses uses the
terminfo database, it SHOULD work fine on any terminal with correct terminfo
entries.

As of Version 0.0.1.1, I have added a limited command structure to diald-top.
It is now possible to send diald commands to force/unforce, block/unblock and
to bring the link up/down, and also to quit diald (immediately or when the
link comes down) all from within diald-top.  This makes the program a lot more
useful.

The program also now reports the status of the link (UP, DOWN, CONNECT,
START_LINK, STOP_LINK, DISCONNECT, CLOSE, etc).  This can still use some work
but it is there now...

As of v2.0, diald-top now has the capability to run remotely, communicating to
a custom server (also included in the package) that farms the contents of the
monitor FIFO out to the remotely running clients.  The communication is done
using TCP/IP on port 1313 on the server.  The identity of the user that is 
remotely running diald-top is verified using identd, and is then looked up in 
a configuration file (by userid, IP address, netmask).

So far, diald-top has been tested in the following configurations:
	Server:
	Linux 2.0.30

	Client:
	Linux 2.0.30		remote client, local client
	BSDi 3.0		remote client

If you get the client up and running on other platforms, please let me know
the particulars and if you had to hack on the sources to get it to compile.
For the platforms above, the only changes were in the Makefile.def as outlined
in the INSTALL file.




Future:
=======

I still would like to get the link status more useful.  There still are some
more things that can be reported (blocked, forced) which should be possible 
to do.

Any suggestions would be useful  :)


Bug Reports, Comments, etc
==========================
All email should be directed at:
	gjhurlbu@beirdo.ott.uplink.on.ca

Please DO send me email.  I enjoy reading email, and it would be nice to
know that one of my little beastly programs is being used for something... :)


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I will now list the suggestions I have received.  I am not sure how many of
these will (or should) be implemented.


ToDo Contibutors:
=================
		(sewilco@fieldday.mn.org)	12/06/95
	o if packets with long TTL, do not display short TTL packets (< 1 min)
	o decrease screen updates to once every 5 seconds when long time TTL
	   packets abound
	o perhaps show the number of short TTL packets

C.J. Beck	(cjb@cjb.ico.net)		11/27/95
	now	()				06/11/00
	o show how long link has been up/down (in current state)
	o show how much traffic has flowed through
	    {ed. not very likely}

Jan Fure	(jan_fure@io.com)		11/06/95
	now	(janfure@home.com)		06/11/00
	o sort display on priority of packets
	    {ed. more likely on TTL}


Patch Contributors:
===================
Jeff Epler	(jepler@inetnebr.com)		12/31/95
	o Patches to resolve IP addresses and port numbers to services in an
	   intelligent manner (will not bring the link up to resolve!)
	o (based on Rev 0.0.1.1)
	o patches incorporated into 0.0.1.2, then 0.0.1.3 (he sent two
	   incremental patches)

Dan Poirer	(poirer@pobox.com)		02/21/97
	now	()				06/11/00
	o Created a man page
	o thank you very much :)
	o based on Rev 0.7 - incorporated into Rev 0.8 release

Mike Laster	(mlaster@galstar.com)		11/17/96
	now	(mlaster@metavillage.com)	06/11/00
	o truncation of local domain names (-l command line)
	o based on Rev 0.6 - FINALLY incorporated into Rev 1.1 release with
	   modifications

Petr Hubeny	(psh@milada.troja.mff.cuni.cz)	01/04/97
	now	(psh@capitol.cz)		06/11/00
	o Removed ugly $ from the version number (modified from his code)
	o Added interface and message displays
	o based on Rev 0.6 - FINALLY incorporated into Rev 1.1 release with
	   modifications

Carl D. Roth	(roth@cse.ucsc.edu)		04/02/97
	o Added message display
	o based on Rev 1.0 - incorporated into Rev 1.1 release

Steffen Ullrich	(ccrlphr@xensei.com)		08/06/97
	o Nonblocking open of the control FIFO
	o based on Rev 1.0 - incorporated into Rev 1.1 release

Ian T Zimmerman	(itz@rahul.net)			08/27/97
	now	(itz@speakeasy.org)		06/11/00
	o improvements to lex/yacc parser
	o added some command line options and runtime commands
	o added glibc obstack support (-DUSE_OBSTACKS)
	o added timeout after opening monitor FIFO (I moved it slightly)
	o minor fixes of resolve usage
	o based on Rev 1.0 - incorporated into Rev 1.1 release

Steffen Ullrich	(ccrlphr@xensei.com)		09/10/97
	o use of select rather than timeouts
	o added -L command line argument to log the monitor data to a file
	  with timestamps to aid in debugging
	o fixed some local allocation problems
	o based on Rev 1.1 - incorporated into Rev 2.0 release

Ian T Zimmerman (itz@transbay.net)		01/18/99
	now	(itz@speakeasy.org)		06/11/00
	o DNS request throttled on LOAD information from the fifo
	o based on Rev 2.0 - incorporated into sourceforge CVS stream 06/11/00
