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mtr 0.94

    1: 
    2: Hi everyone, 
    3: 
    4: This is the "todo" file for mtr. I just realized that some people
    5: might think that this is all in MY queue to implement. That is not
    6: true: This is the "for everybody" todo list. Feel free to pick a
    7: "project" and implement something off this list.
    8: 
    9: Students: Feel free to take up one of these as a programming exercise
   10: for one of your courses.
   11: 
   12: Everybody: If you want to start on something, contact me first, so
   13: that the effort isn't wasted by someone who finishes just a tad
   14: earlier. I'll happily provide "coaching" to anyone who wants to
   15: implement something on this list. That way we get the design of
   16: these things the way I like them. This should result in a better
   17: maintainable mtr.
   18: 
   19: Oh, Feel free to provide suggestions for this list. 
   20: 
   21: 
   22: -- REW
   23: 
   24: ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   25: 
   26: 
   27: - Stuff to implement:
   28: 
   29:   - Allow mtr to log the return packets, for later analysis.
   30:     Done: 0.25 . Todo: allow the user interface(s) to work while
   31:     still logging to a file. Write a "logfile displaying" mode to
   32:     mtr.
   33: 
   34:   - Request timestamping at the remote site.
   35:        Andreas Fasbender has an algorithm that will allow us to 
   36:        convert these measurements into one-way measurements, not just
   37:        round-trip.
   38: 
   39:   - allow "keyboard navigation" in the GTK version. 
   40: 
   41:   - Keep all packets and make the "best" and "worst" columns show the
   42:     xx-th percentile....
   43: 
   44:   - Being able to expand the "column width" of the hosts listed would 
   45:     be nice, too.
   46: 
   47:   - Display per host stats when multiple servers respond at a particular
   48:     hop count.
   49: 
   50: 
   51: - Bugs to fix?
   52: 
   53:   - Do something useful if host couldn't be resolved. 
   54:        -- Done. 
   55: 
   56:   - Revert to curses mode even if DISPLAY is set, but a problem
   57:     prevents us from running in X11 mode.
   58:        -->  The problem is that gtk_init simply calls exit for us if
   59:             it finds a problem. Tricky! Suggestions welcome. 
   60:        --> Call "gtk_check_init" when available. (i.e. new enough
   61:            (1.2?) GTK version).
   62: 
   63: - Nice to have:
   64: 
   65:   - stop sending packets when a new host is getting entered. 
   66: 
   67:   - Show state ("looking up host") while doing the DNS lookup for a new
   68:     host.
   69: 
   70:   - to have a choice of icmp, tcp, and udp pings. -- Matt Martini
   71: 
   72:   - Autoconf 2.13 has a neat function that can be used to find the 
   73:     res_init function: 
   74: 
   75: 	   AC_SEARCH_LIBS(res_init, bind resolv, ,
   76: 	      AC_MSG_ERROR(No resolver library found))
   77: 
   78:     At the moment (march 1999) autoconf 2.13 is still too new to require 
   79:     everyone to upgrade. About a year from now we can put this in....
   80: 
   81:   - Implement rfc2317 mechanism to do reverse lookups for networks that
   82:     have DNS delegations on non-octet boundaries. -- Daniel Bergstrom
   83:     (noa@melody.se)
   84: 
   85:   - The longer MTR runs, the less meaningful the packet loss
   86:     statistic. Or more meaningful, depending on your point of view.
   87:     Perhaps MTR should use a circular buffer of some configurable
   88:     number of results, and calculate the loss against that. -- Jacob Elder
   89: 
   90:   - It would be nice if the window size wasn't fixed. If I'm only 5
   91:     hops from the host I'm monitoring, MTR wastes a lot of screen real
   92:     estate. -- Jacob Elder
   93: 
   94:   - Colors in the curses version. -- Amix
   95: 
   96:   - If we run a mtr to monitor a connection it would be nice if the time at
   97:     which mtr was started is print somewhere. -- Sebastian Ganschow
   98: 
   99: 
  100: 
  101: ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  102: 
  103: Things that shouldn't be on the TODO list because they're done. ;-)
  104: 
  105:   - Allow a toggle between hostname/IP number display. (for example a 
  106:     click on the hostname could revert to ip number display in gtk version.
  107:     curses: "n" key toggles hostnames/ipnumbers?)
  108: 
  109:   - Allow mtr to also send larger packets. 
  110:        This will enable us to get a feel for the speed of the links
  111:        we're traversing. (Van Jacobson was working on this His tool
  112:        was slow, mtr will rock with this feature.... :-)
  113:        (Anybody have the statistics experience to tell me how
  114:        to do the data analysis?)
  115: 	-- DONE. Thanks to Olav Kvittem ...
  116: 
  117:   - The "don't probe all hosts at once" strategy can be improved a bit.
  118:     It should not probe more than 10 unknown hosts, but the counter need
  119:     not be reset at the start of the "round". This way if you probe
  120:     slowly (relative to the RTT time to the end host), it can probe
  121:     all hosts in the first "round". 
  122:        -- DONE.
  123: 
  124:   - Read environment variable "MTR_DEFAULTS" as a commandline before
  125:     parsing the commandline.  -- DONE. (ok it's MTR_OPTIONS.)
  126: