My Manet Project Plan
- 1. Project Plan MyMANET Hrushikesh Mehendale, Petar Tsankov, Chinmay Gangakhedkar, Victoria Au Guided by – Dr. Santosh Vempala Background MANETs or Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks are a category of wireless networks in which no centralized governing body is present in the network. Nodes in the network are connected to each other in an ad- hoc manner; every node functions as a host and as a router at the same time. MyMANET is a framework for implementing MANET functionalities and has been developed by Ashwin Paranjape and Santosh Vempala at Georgia Institute of Technology. The job of our team is to take this project closed towards deployment. At this point of time, we felt that there are two deployment scenarios where MyMANET can be really useful. First scenario is providing intra-net and Internet connectivity in some areas of developing countries. MyMANET is affordable as it is just software. It is also easy to deploy and scale. Hence, it is ideal for developing regions. The second scenario is connectivity and communication in disaster affected areas and disaster-relief operations. Disaster affected areas lack infrastructure and need instant connectivity. Since MyMANET does not require much infrastructure and can be deployed rapidly, it may prove extremely valuable in providing connectivity and communication in disaster affected areas. The technical core that has already been implemented contains the software architecture, manifold routing protocol, gateway functionality for Internet access, terminal based network statistics visualization and a terminal based peer-to-peer chat application. Objectives Following are the objectives of our project: 1. To come up with a complete path for deployment of MyMANET 2. To develop relevant applications over MyMANET those realize its potential utility completely. Proposed program and Rationale The first step to achieve our objectives is to find a suitable deployment scenario and business partner. Usability of MyMANET is extremely important from the point of view effective deployment. Hence understanding the precise requirements beforehand is crucial. Two possible scenarios mentioned above are connectivity for developing regions and connectivity in disaster affected areas. We will start exploring opportunities on both the fronts. We will introduce MyMANET and demonstrate its potential to a list of selected organizations. The positive feedback, coming from partners that are willing to use MyMANET, will be analyzed in order to understand the requirements. Having analyzed the deployment path, the team will establish a set of necessary modifications and we will confidently 1
- 2. Project Plan start implementing them. Bearing the time constraints in mind, we will try to achieve the best possible combination of the deployment scenario and the business partner. For successful deployment we will need to work on the following aspects of MyMANET: 1. Enhancing usability - GUI, network configuration and startup, network monitoring 2. Building effective applications that utilize the full potential of MyMANET - Internet, peer-to-peer chat, peer-to-peer voice chat, demand-supple based resource sharing 3. Interoperability - Porting MyMANET on a different hardware platform like a wireless router 4. Tuning some MyMANET code (if required) for actual deployment It is clear that points two and three from the list above directly depend on the future partner. However, our team has already analyzed potential features and applications. After requirements are outlined, we will start working on the above mentioned aspects. We will start building prototypes of GUI enhancements and applications and get them evaluated from our business partners. Prototypes will be improved iteratively, incorporating the feedback from partners in each iteration. This way we will ensure that our product matches the expectations of the end users. In regard to usability, building an intuitive graphical interface for network statistics visualization and coming up with an easy network configuration sequence will be the team's primary focus. Potential applications that can run over MyMANET are Internet, local chat, local file sharing and VoIP. We understand that the future business partner will wish to provide a service of his interest, which will require a specific application that provides this service. Therefore, we will wait until receiving positive response from the selected partners. In case of unexpected delay in communication we plan to develop one or more of our ideas. Along with usability, interoperability is equally important. Also, in the scenarios that we have shortlisted, coverage requirements of MyMANET may be higher (in hundreds of meters). Taking the limitations of the current system into account, porting MyMANET on a wireless router is essential. The laptop wireless cards are limited in their range and introducing a router in the network will have a great impact on the scalability and the performance of the network. Due to time constraints, we have limited the scope of this project to porting MyMANET on only one router model. Milestones Because one of the main purposes of the project is to pave a road to deployment, we will spend the first three weeks analyzing and selecting business partners that will support the application and will be able to find myMANET useful for their needs. In our search, we will need to decide on many factors such as location and breadth of the location. For example, if the client is a local Atlanta organization, we might not have to go through a lot of bureaucracy and be able to monitor the myMANET release. However, if it was an international organization, we might be able to reach more people in a more prominent way. Additionally, the purpose for which the application will be used is also a crucial deciding factor. As part of this process, we will also need to demonstrate the current capabilities of myMANET to clients and to gather customization requirements from them. It is with these requirements, that will we will transform the the core MyMANET framework into a usable program for an organization. 2
- 3. Project Plan Week 1 - Week 3 a. Freezing scenario requirements - Identifying business partners - Demonstration and their feedback - Derivation of requirements b. Understanding porting MyMANET on a wireless router - Router selection - Precise methodology - Porting test modules on router c. Basic GUI enhancements - Network statistics visualization Week 4 a. Building basic applications prototypes and first feedback from partners b. Completion of basic GUI enhancements and first feedback from partners Week 5 - Week 6 a. Completion of the following incorporating second feedback from partners - P2P chat application - P2P voice chat application - Demand supply based resource sharing application b. Completion of the porting of MyMANET on the selected router c. Completion of GUI enhancements incorporating second feedback from partners Week 6 - Week 7 a. System integration b. To set up a test bed inside campus b. Test plan c. Analysis of results Week 8 a. Feedback on the test from partners b. Incorporating the final changes into the system c. Report writing Week 9 - Buffer 3
- 4. Project Plan Division of Responsibilities Chinmay and Victoria - GUI and applications Hrushikesh and Petar - Router porting, Usability enhancements 4