1. Wireless LAN Topology Visualiser Project Supervisor: Dr Arkady Zaslavsky Project Team Members: Jignesh Rambhia Robert Mark Bram Tejas Magia

2. Wireless LAN Wireless LAN infrastructure Allow mobile users connect to network Access Points - Cisco Aironet series - Apple AirPort Protocols used: - 80211.b - Bluetooth

3. Overview of functions Web accessible visualisation of system mapped onto physical locations Active polling of access points Dynamic discovery of access points (not implemented) Storing data to allow for tracking of change Event notification

4. Visualiser has a Data Base Initial registration gathers static data – Geographic location, IP address, Contact details of point administrator Continual polling updates dynamic data – Number of users, bytes sent and received

5. Browse Topology The user browses access point topology through maps From World… click locations to zoom in

6. To Country.. Browse Topology

7. To State.. Browse Topology

8. To Campus.. where a mouse roll-over displays whatever information you are authorised to see. Browse Topology

9. Administer Access Points Directly And a click will bring you to the Access Point’s administration page (if you have username and password)

10. Visualisation displays any combination of data based on user authorisation level, determined by login – Administrator can alter settings, start and stop system – Registered user can view all parts of visualisation – Public user can view the visualisation without data Administrator sees all, public sees none! Authorisation Levels

11. Administrative Tool – Monitoring and Management Administrator monitors status of access points – Network Traffic – users and data rates – Online or offline Direct management of access points via links to access point web servers Maps access points to physical locations

12. Display Up to date Data Display current data on all access points – Human readable location data – Internet Address – MAC Address – Type of hardware – Number of users – Bytes sent in time period – Bytes received in time period

13. User Levels Allow three levels of access Administrator - alter settings, start and stop system Registered user - view all parts of visualisation Public user - view the visualisation without data

14. Design Principles Modular – Independent subsystems Liveliness Maintenance Extensibility – Development of tool set Totally configurable – All settings read from configuration file XML data storage – No commerical databases – Human readable data format

15. XML data structure XML structures nest element instances within other element instances. Each element is a record – each XML document has one root element World is the root – locations Location instances – accessPoints accessPoint instances

16. Locations and Access Points Both record types have data in common A unique ID Map they are linked to (ID of another Location), x and y co-ordinate of their position on that map Data that can be displayed on the web with a rollover (HTML table tag)

17. Locations Locations store data about the map that is used to visualise that location

18. Access Point Profiles The network is heterogeneous – different types of Access Point hardware may make different data available. A common data set is defined with a master profile Specialisation is allowed with a type specific element

19. Access Point Records Some items of data will be displayed on their visualisation. They store a title and display value Some items of data will be polled for updates. They must contain enough access data to allow this to happen.

20. Polling Each Access Point is periodically polled to update certain items of data Different Access Points make this data available in different ways – HTTP on an internal web server – Telnet – Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) The system maintains a library of classes for each access method and ensures the correct one is used for each item of data

21. Web data preparation Periodically a subset of the Access Point data is extracted from its XML file and stored in another, formatted for easy display

22. Visualisation Servlets are run on the server side, taking HTTP requests from users and displaying the maps with data extracted by the previous subsystem

23. Data entry New Access Points can be added to the system through a simple GUI.

24. Mailing A mail system is used to implement event notification Whenever an error has occurred in the system, notification is sent Whenever an Access Point has not responded to polling three times in a row, a notification is sent

25. Logging A logging API is used that allows logged messages to be sent to a number of places at once: – A terminal – An on-screen text component – A data file – Any number of listening ‘streams’

26. Control Applets to control system

27. Technology Development Environments: – JBuilder and TextPlus to build Java classes – XML Spy to build XML files Programming API’s – Java SDK 1.2 and Servlet libraries – Java Mail API and Activation Framework – JCE encryption API – JAXB to parse XML

28. Limitations For XML parsing we used JAXB – JAXB parses XML DTD files and constructs a specialised set of Java classes for them – JAXB unmarshalls - parses XML into a set of Java objects – JAXB marshalls – writes Java objects back to XML – JAXB is only in its first release – It can only parse DTD’s – It does not implement all parts of DTD spec

29. Limitations Access Techniques – No generic access method was found – HTTP or Telnet methods both receive formatted text that must be parsed Dynamic discovery impossible – Addhost unreliable – No identifiable pattern in MAC addresses

30. Future work Administrative Tool for Security and Trouble Shooting – Detect new access points added to system SNMP? – Perform data analysis for network problems A more fluid Data entry system – for Locations, Users and Access Points