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Hello again,
Well, I appear to have the makings of a very useful system for deriving
Ethernet info, and displaying it. I may even have some code to contribute to
the community.
But first, some comments/gripes/questions. Some of these can be addressed by
fairly simple hacks, but I am far from expert in tcl, so it's all hard work
for me just now. Some are more fundamental, and require major surgery to fix.
(1) Why is a node's vendor and function not implemented as SEPARATE
descriptive (and easily processable) attributes? The icons can then be mapped
on to those attributes rather than onto the arbitrary order that these types
(most of which are unknown at Cranfield) appear on the menu. SNMP can usually
tell me whether a node is a bridge, a router or something else and a
combination of SNMP and Ethernet address can usually tell me who the vendor
is. I know that vendor boxes/badges are a useful way to distinguish by sight,
but in network managment terms, I'm far more concerned about a node's
function. Rather than a generic "unknown node" icon, I'd much rather have the
text BRIDGE or ROUTER than an icon for every function/vendor combination. I'd
also quite a like another range of icons with department name.
Please understand, I'm not griping about the supplied set of icons; what I
need is greater flexibility in representing a node on the map. I'd quite like
to have an arbitrary number of icons and text strings, so that I can
separately represent a node as being a PC, made by DEC, running Windows and in
a certain department. If no icons exist for those attributes, then I will at
least see the attribute string. Perhaps a terse mode will permit just one icon
and one label, as now, but the verbose mode will show maybe three or four
different icons for further information.
(2) Apparently groups used to be implemented so that the icon was centred on
the position of the expanded group, but that this was changed. I'd quite like
this behaviour in some circumstances, not others. Could this be switchable?
I'd also quite like groups which tile, i.e. no overlap when expanded.
(3) I'd quite like to have more than one scrollable window in a single
interpreter, i.e. so that I can roam round my network's backbone, then expand
a department in another window. This could be implemented as another way to
expand a group, but I'd prefer just to have more than one view of the same
map, like GNU emacs; selections etc would be displayed simultaneously in all
windows, though group expansion would be specific to the window, so that I
could see an expanded and unexpanded view of the same map. The only way I can
see to have more than one window is to create separate maps, and use
references between them.
(4) Hyperlinks within a map. Apparently, they exist in log windows, but I'd
like to be able to warp around the map, i.e. if I have a clashing IP address
(quite common round here), warp straight to the other system which has this
address.
(5) Incremental select/deselect tool; left hand button turns off all the
previous selections; selection by type does not. This is irritating, as I
normally want to select a large number of icons, then add or remove a few from
the selection by hand.
(6) Mass linking of a list of selected nodes to a single network.
(7) Representation of ring topology networks as *networks*, NOT a group icon. Selecting FDDI as the network has no discernable effect. I really want to be able to have a rectangle with rounded corners, or an ellipse.
- --
Peter Lister Email: p.lister@cranfield.ac.uk
Computer Centre, Cranfield University Voice: +44 1234 754200 ext 2828
Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL UK Fax: +44 1234 751814
- --- How would I create the universe if I had the chance? A Einstein ---
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