Final Blog Post: Netengine

Hi everybody, this is going to be my last blog post as a participant of GSOC2014. I’m very sad about this, those have been very hard worked months but very formative.

I improved both my coding skills but above all I have earned a work methodology thanks to my mentor Federico, who said to me to be more reflexive and to be more precise in what I do.

I have learnt some aspect of versioning (Git) I ignored before and learned much more on Python than I did by myself.

This is the “change log” of the last time period of the program: we developed a new backend, the HTTP backend. It aims to retrieve informations from the web admin interface of AirOS devices, that’s why we called it HTTP.

We wrote documentation about all the project, describing all the things an user should do both to contribute or use Netengine, trying to be as much more clear and to make it simpler as we could.

Unfortunately this is my last year as a student, no PhD on my way (for now), so I will not be eligible at all for next editions coming.

Greetings and thanks: I would like to thank Ninux , the community network I’ve worked with. I’ve had the possibility of joining their meetings, to talk a lot with every member and to be supported every time I had some problem about what I was doing.
Obviously my mentor Federico Capoano, Mario Behling from Freifunk who supervised projects.

For further questions on the project please visit https://github.com/ninuxorg/netengine or email us at ninuxdev@ml.ninux.org or read the docs!

GSoC: Netengine project

Here it is my second blog post for the Mid Term Evaluation of GSOC2014.

As I wrote in the previous one, I’m working on Netengine, a Python module to abstract network devices and get information from them.

The work is going very well, I’m learning new things every day with the help of my mentor, Federico Capoano, and I’m very happy with the development.

In this first part of the work we completed as per goals, the SNMP back-end for AirOS and OpenWRT firmwares.

The most difficult part of this first part was to work with SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) because I had never worked with it, so I had to learn it’s basics and how it works, in particular it’s way of retrieving info from devices.

It uses different codes (MIB), everyone of it gives access to different information of the device (e.g device name, addresses, interfaces); so before starting to write I had to look for the correct MIBs to query.

Now we are focusing on the ssh.OpenWRT back-end ready to switch the next one on the list once completed.

I’m definitely very happy with how the work is going, with the communications I’m having with my mentor and with all coding practices I’m learning from him.

The program gave me not only the possibility to improve my skills but also to meet new people very experienced on the field.

The next step is to start coding on the new back-end, probably an HTTP back-end for AirOS, to complete the program in time.

For further questions on the project please visit https://github.com/ninuxorg/netengine or email us at ninux­dev@ml.ninux.org.  

Netengine Google Sumer of Code Project

Hi everyone, I’m Alessandro Bucciarelli and I am participating for the first time to Google Summer of Code.
I chose to apply to work on Netengine, a project by Freifunk/Ninux. Netengine is a Python abstraction layer thought to retrieve informations about network configurations, and not only, from multiple couples of network protocols/device firmware.

Actually the main network protocols we are working on are: SNMP, SSH; with HTTP which is an idea for the immediate future.
By the firmware side there are AirOS and OpenWRT which are the most used firmwares among network devices (antennas and other) deployed inside the Ninux network.

Many of the readers, if experienced in the network field, will agree with me in saying that the retrieval of network informations (e.g IP addresses of the interface/s, MAC addresses, routing configurations) is vital.

This aspect is more than vital when you are interacting with remote devices, geographically widespread and sometimes accessible by only unskilled persons, to have a timely diagnostics of the  deployed hardware.

The module we are developing tries to solve, and I am sure it will be so, the problem of having informations from the devices REMOTELY, without any kind of further configurations and without any kind of physical interaction with the device.

For further details and code please visit https://github.com/ninuxorg/netengine or email us at ninux-dev@ml.ninux.org