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New Features in RLI.jar (June 6, 2006)

All jar files dated before June 6, 2006 are invalid. The new jar file incorporates all of the features in the version known as betaRLI.jar dated March 2006 and contains changes in response to our new hardware configuration. The features description below is identical to the one describing the earlier betaRLI.jar file. However, the newer RLI.jar file recognizes the new internal organization of the ONL testbed hardware making all older jar files obsolete.

Furthermore, the SSH tunnel has changed. The SSH command will appear to SSH into onl.arl.wustl.edu instead of onl03.arl.wustl.edu, and the end of the tunnel will terminate at the hostname onlsrv instead of onl03. (In reality though, you will still end up on logged into the host onl03.) See the RLI SSH Tunneling link in the Getting Started page that can be found in the side bar of the main ONL Web page (after logging into the ONL Web site).

Note the following about the new RLI.jar file:

• RLI.jar will convert a configuration/experiment file created by an older jar file, but there is no easy way to convert the new configuration file back to be used by the older jar file. So, it would be prudent to make a copy of all of your configuration/experiment files before switching to the newer format.
• When RLI.jar is used with Windows XP, the monitoring panels will sometimes lock up. It is unclear what triggers this behavior, but it looks like it only happens when users are running version 1.4.2 of the JRE. (It is unclear whether there is also a problem with Linux when using version 1.4.2 of the JRE.) The work around is to upgrade to the current version of the JRE (1.5.0). We would like to hear about any problems that you encounter. Send email to testbed-ops@onl.arl.wustl.edu and include the type of OS, the version of the JRE ("java -version"), and the type of host.

The new features are:

• No need to change mode from Configuration to Monitoring.

  Before:

  Select Mode => Monitoring to switch from configuration menus to monitoring menus.

  Now:

  There is no Mode => Monitoring selection. Configuration and monitoring menus appear together for any particular item; e.g., if you select a port, you will see all of the configuration menu items followed by the monitoring items.

• Plugin debug messages from monmsgs can be turned ON/OFF.

  Before:

  A user would have to SSH into the CP and run monmsgs to capture plugin debug output in a window.

  Now:

  The debugging can be selected from an RLI menu. Click the NSP icon and then select Debugging. Select the debugging ON box, and then select the message level for the port of interest. All output is recorded in /tmp/debug.log at the CP.

• Negation added to General Match filters.

  Before: You could not negate the filter.
  Now:

  You can. Typically, it would be used to implement "if a packet does NOT match the filter, then ...."

• Enable/Disable Filters

  Before: N/A
  Now:

  You can. Use the on field of the table to turn a filter on or off, essentially, adding or removing the filter. This allows you to remove a filter and reinstall it later without having to reenter the data.

• A monitored value can be shown as either an absolute value or as a rate.

  Before:

  The choice was automatic. For example, the queue length would represent the sample queue length; i.e., the length of the queue at the instance that the queue length counter was read. The idea is that given observations D(0), D(1), ... , D(n), gathered at a time interval of T, report either the rate (i.e., [D(k)-D(k-1)]/T) or the absolute value (i.e., D(0), D(1), ... , D(n)).

  Now:

  You can choose whether a parameter is shown as a rate or an absolute value. This option is available for most parameters but a few have no time element and can only be displayed as absolute values.

• Distributed Queueing (DQ) is ON by default.

  Before: DQ was OFF by default.
  Now:

  DQ is ON by default. If you want to turn it off, select NSP => Queueing => DQ OFF.

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