Experimenting with active networks involves testing several topologies and thus forces the programmer to deal with a number of configuration files. Maintenance becomes more difficult as the complexity of the topology grows. Furthermore, Active Applications are, of course, distributed and activities such as management, debugging, and performance measurements may be very complex.
The need for an easier and faster way to carry out experiments has pushed us to develop a graphical, user-friendly tool, in order to relieve the application programmer from secondary details which are specific for the Execution Environment.

The Project

ANgate is not just a graphical interface to the network topology; it is a framework for Active Network and Active Application Management. An active (programmable) SNMP-like framework allows the programmer to easily gather information about the state of the network and, above all, it allows to easily debug and monitor distributed Active Applications. It is a friendly tool to convey up-to-date information about the behaviour of active nodes and of active applications. No more tons of log files!
For further details about the framework you may refer to [1].

The ANgate GUI is a Java applet which can be run remotely from the active cluster. One of the cluster nodes, the AN Access Point, hosts a permanent gateway service to provide authentication and to allow multiple sessions. One user can be authenticated as Super user (the active cluster administrator) and can run and stop the active network daemons in the cluster nodes. Other users can run active applications and monitor them, but they cannot change the network topology.
The GUI is organized in management modules. So far two modules have been implemented. The Manager module allows the administrator to design, to set up and to run a PLAN network. Users can use this module to check the active nodes status and to inject active capsules. The Monitor module is the user interface to access the active MIBs of the nodes and it allows users to debug and monitor their applications.

At moment the system supports only PLAN 3.22. Future extensions will support other execution environments.

Try-out demo

You can try ANgate on our 40 active nodes testbed (ART). You will be granted user privilegies to access some functionalities of ANgate (e.g., injection of real active capsules in the active network). Sometimes, the try-out access is not available for maintenance or for reserved use.

Try-out login:

username: guest
password: guest

Software Components - Requirements

We provide ANgate (v 1.0b6) for free. Just send a request by e-mail with some information about you and your research project. WARNING: software components are not integrated and installation does not result straightforward.
The software includes:

• the AN Gateway - a server java application which provides the access service to the active cluster;
• a set of UNIX shell scripts to manage the PLAN EE processes in a cluster of workstation;
• the client Java applets, i.e. the Manager and Monitor modules - (see screenshots);
• the Active Local Agent (ALA) service for PLAN 3.22;
• several plan programs.

Requirements for the remote management station:

• a web browser with the Java Plug-in (v 1.3.1 or later)

Requirements for the AN Access Point:

• gateway service application (included in ANgate v 1.0b6)
• a set of UNIX shell scripts and plan programs (included in ANgate v 1.0b6)
• gawk
• a webserver
• clients applets (included in ANgate v 1.0b6)
• PLAN 3.22
• Active Local Agent (ALA) service for PLAN (included in ANgate v 1.0b6)

Requirements for the active nodes:

• PLAN 3.22
• Active Local Agent (ALA) service for PLAN 3.22 (included in ANgate v 1.0b6)

Authors

The ANgate has been developed at the ICAR-CNR Computer Networks Labs by Giuseppe Di Fatta and Giuseppe Lo Presti with the important contribution of under-graduate students Antonio Barone and Pierluigi Chirco.