[WLANware] SNMP plugin for OSLR - GSoC 2011

[ambarisha b]

I have studied the codebase of ap-51-flash-ng and these are the points
that hit me:

1. Presently its just for Linux.(Socket functions like socket_open are
problem)Our complete app would be cross platform.
2. The protocol headers up the stack , arp , ip , tcp/udp are parsed
by the functions handle_***_packet() calls except for udp which also
handles the actual flashing(it would have been better if this were a
separate function).One thing in handle_udp_packet() that struck me was
that all the attributes that indicate that a block has been
transferred are being set before the tftp_packet_send_data()
call.If that call returns a '<0' these aren't being reverted
back.tftp_packet_send_data() also
doesn't seem to be cleaning it up.Is this a bug or did I miss something ?
3. We should make the implementation of the network stack more
robust.(Ofcourse I can see that this was just a mockup but I just want
to make note of the point).Is there a specific reason for going with
the uIP stack? I know its quite small, but can you please elaborate on
the choice ?
4. Coming to the GUI of the flasher, I agree the process should be
made as simple as possible.I listed down the main things that are to
be presented on the front end.
    --> Firmware image( A file chooser to select the image)
    --> Network interface information (This has to be easy to fill out)
    --> A progress bar that indicates the transfer of the image to the
router(I guess this is going to be pretty quick but may be we could
embed the gap that we give the router to install the image into this
so that user needn't consider it explicitly)
What else would the frontend involve ?
5. There are also some TODO's commented out in the code that are worth
some attention.
6. There are other things that I haven't properly researched properly
in our context like SSH.We also need to implement the HTTP protocol
support for flashing.

Is there a possibility of trying to flash a wrong image that might
brick the router? If so, should we add any functionality to help avoid
such mistakes ? Any corrections or improvements would be really
helpful.If everything works out well, I was planning to make visual
mock-ups of the application.What do you say?

Cheers
Ambarisha

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 5:08 AM, ambarisha b <b.ambarisha at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just went over the discussion on the ticket.I have yet to study the
> ap51-flash-ng code.I will go through it and report back.I will also
> try to prepare and send in a draft , once I get a clear idea of what
> would be involved.
>
> Cheers
> Ambarisha
>
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 4:30 AM, ZioPRoTo (Saverio Proto)
> <zioproto at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> http://dev.wlan-si.net/ticket/45
>>
>> as you already mention in the ticket, we are talking about a GUI for:
>>
>> http://dev.open-mesh.com/downloads/svn/ap51-flash-ng/
>> http://dev.open-mesh.com/wiki/ap51-supported-devices
>>
>> or something more complicated, but for sure this is the codebase to start with
>>
>> Saverio
>>
>