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    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:   - Can the reports generated also include any secondary servers?  In 
   45:     the interactive mode, any new servers that are found in the 
   46:     traceroute are added to the list, but it seems to only include 
   47:     one set of servers when using the -r option.  
   48: 
   49:   - Being able to expand the "column width" of the hosts listed would 
   50:     be nice, too.
   51: 
   52: 
   53: - Bugs to fix?
   54: 
   55:   - Do something useful if host couldn't be resolved. 
   56:        -- Done. 
   57: 
   58:   - Revert to curses mode even if DISPLAY is set, but a problem
   59:     prevents us from running in X11 mode.
   60:        -->  The problem is that gtk_init simply calls exit for us if
   61:             it finds a problem. Tricky! Suggestions welcome. 
   62:        --> Call "gtk_check_init" when available. (i.e. new enough
   63:            (1.2?) GTK version).
   64: 
   65: - Nice to have:
   66: 
   67:   - stop sending packets when a new host is getting entered. 
   68: 
   69:   - Show state ("looking up host") while doing the DNS lookup for a new
   70:     host.
   71: 
   72:   - to have a choice of icmp, tcp, and udp pings. -- Matt Martini
   73: 
   74:   - Autoconf 2.13 has a neat function that can be used to find the 
   75:     res_init function: 
   76: 
   77: 	   AC_SEARCH_LIBS(res_init, bind resolv, ,
   78: 	      AC_MSG_ERROR(No resolver library found))
   79: 
   80:     At the moment (march 1999) autoconf 2.13 is still too new to require 
   81:     everyone to upgrade. About a year from now we can put this in....
   82: 
   83:   - Implement rfc2317 mechanism to do reverse lookups for networks that
   84:     have DNS delegations on non-octet boundaries. -- Daniel Bergstrom
   85:     (noa@melody.se)
   86: 
   87:   - The longer MTR runs, the less meaningful the packet loss
   88:     statistic. Or more meaningful, depending on your point of view.
   89:     Perhaps MTR should use a circular buffer of some configurable
   90:     number of results, and calculate the loss against that. -- Jacob Elder
   91: 
   92:   - It would be nice if the window size wasn't fixed. If I'm only 5
   93:     hops from the host I'm monitoring, MTR wastes a lot of screen real
   94:     estate. -- Jacob Elder
   95: 
   96:   - Colors in the curses version. -- Amix
   97: 
   98:   - If we run a mtr to monitor a connection it would be nice if the time at
   99:     which mtr was started is print somewhere. -- Sebastian Ganschow
  100: 
  101: 
  102: 
  103: ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  104: 
  105: Things that shouldn't be on the TODO list because they're done. ;-)
  106: 
  107:   - Allow a toggle between hostname/IP number display. (for example a 
  108:     click on the hostname could revert to ip number display in gtk version.
  109:     curses: "n" key toggles hostnames/ipnumbers?)
  110: 
  111:   - Allow mtr to also send larger packets. 
  112:        This will enable us to get a feel for the speed of the links
  113:        we're traversing. (Van Jacobson was working on this His tool
  114:        was slow, mtr will rock with this feature.... :-)
  115:        (Anybody have the statistics experience to tell me how
  116:        to do the data analysis?)
  117: 	-- DONE. Thanks to Olav Kvittem ...
  118: 
  119:   - The "don't probe all hosts at once" strategy can be improved a bit.
  120:     It should not probe more than 10 unknown hosts, but the counter need
  121:     not be reset at the start of the "round". This way if you probe
  122:     slowly (relative to the RTT time to the end host), it can probe
  123:     all hosts in the first "round". 
  124:        -- DONE.
  125: 
  126:   - Read environment variable "MTR_DEFAULTS" as a commandline before
  127:     parsing the commandline.  -- DONE. (ok it's MTR_OPTIONS.)
  128: