Subject: seeking Mbone troubleshooting alpha testers

From: Dave Thaler <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 16:13:06 -0400 (EDT)

As part of my thesis work, I am working on trouble reporting system for
the MBone.  A client can be invoked from vic or vat, or directly from the
command line.  The client talks to troubleshooting servers which run
things like mtrace, SNMP queries, etc, and do two main things:
   1) Give feedback to the client(s)
   2) Alert operators (via email) if certain problems are noticed

The client software is now available for alpha testers.  A server
distribution will also be available for alpha testing shortly.  

Further information can be found on the web:
   http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~thalerd/gdt.html

Comments/suggestions appreciated.  More details appear below for those
interested.

-Dave

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General idea (from user's point of view):
   You're experiencing packet loss on a vic/vat session, but either
   don't know how to read mtrace output, or don't want to spend time
   on it at the moment.  So you just click on "Report problem" and
   continue participating in the session.

   A troubleshooting client starts up, locates a "nearby" server using
   an expanding ring search, and submits a problem report.  The
   server uses tools such as mtrace and mstat to confirm the existence
   of the problem and attempt to diagnose it (see draft-ietf-mboned-mdh-00.txt
   for general procedures).  If the problem can be narrowed down to
   a specific router or link (or even several of them), the server
   will email an operator (currently me, but send me email if you want
   such automatic notifications relevant to your network).

   Although there's presently one server for testing, there can be 
   different servers for different domains.  This solves one "problem"
   with SNMP in that if a domain runs a server, it only has to give
   its own server permission to do SNMP queries, not the entire world,
   and everyone gains the benefits of the procedures in the MDH draft.
   Various other scalability and security-related issues are addressed
   in the paper available via the web page, some of which are already 
   implemented in the server.