[Ninux-Wireless] [blog] MapServer improvement - GSoC 2011

[Sephiroth]

Nuovo post sul blog (Ninux.org Wireless Community): 

'MapServer improvement - GSoC 2011' di Sephiroth

Wirelss communities around the world are growing rapidly and year after year
more and more people are interested in joining the new open wireless
infrastructure. As more people join the various communities, new necessities
aries. One of the key necessity in Ninux.org is to have a map server which is
not only powerful and efficient but also easy to use for new comers.

This project will deal with Map Server for Wireless Community Networks  (WCNs).
Map Servers are valuable tools for WCNs for monitoring and debugging  networks
as well as they could act as meeting point for inserting new  nodes position and
contacting other neighbor nodes. For this reason  almost all WCNs have one map
server that fits their needs  (e.g.  Freimap, Nodewatcher, WNMAP etc).

However some of those map servers provide detailed information about the  status
of the network (such as collisions, information gathered through  SNMP or
light-weight CGI) that, depending on how these information are  presented, could
confuse new comers and web-site visitors.

On the other side, some other map servers (such as WNMAP) adopt a  different
philosophy and provide nice and simple interface.
Those map servers can be used even by non-tech users to i) signal their 
locations as "potential nodes" ii) contact other neighbor nodes to set  up links
and iii) measure distances between nodes in an easy way. The  drawback is that
these "easier" map servers usually fail in providing  in-depth network
information that could be really useful for network  participant for monitoring
and debugging purposes.

In this project I will blend some of the existing map server  technologies and
improve usability and interface in order to produce a  powerful map server that
is also easy to use.

The map server frontend will use Python for its backend, leveraging on  the
Django Framework and on the NodeWatcher project.
The front end will be rebuild from scracth starting from the "easy"  WNMAP
interface and using HTML and Javascript. In particular, I will use  the Jquery
javascript library.

The produced work will have the following features:

- Big and nice map in which users could put their position and sign up  as
"Potential Node". Once a node is up, it will be visualized on the map  as an
"Active Node".
- Potential/Active nodes can be contacted via email, so that, using the  map
server, users could easily contact their neighbor for creating new  links.
- Distance calculation between nodes.
- List of nodes, possibility of search a node or an address in the map.
- VPN topology map
- OLSR topology map

- Integration with a monitoring system to draw quality of links.
- Integration with a monitoring system to provide nodes information  (devices,
mac, ip, ssid, configurations).
- Try to implement some of the features of the proprietary Ubiquity Air  Control
such as web interface speed test for network link.

Source code -> https://github.com/sephiroth6

For more feature, news and implementatios -> http://wiki.ninux.org/NodeShot

Contacs: Student Angelo & Mentor Lorenzo

http://blog.ninux.org/2011/06/02/mapserver-improvement-gsoc-2011/

(messaggio generato automaticamente)