* Thanks to all those who have contributed their time and their suggestions and bug reports *
===
Requirements:
* a Mac Plus or better, with MacOS 6.0.4 or better, and either MacTCP 1.1.1 or better or Open Transport 1.0.8 or better, attached to a network over which the Mac can talk to one or more devices that are manageable by SNMP over IP
* you need to know an SNMP read community for each device you want to map
* you need some basic MIB knowledge if you want to interpret the datagram log, or the Monitor and Details and Browse displays; otherwise no MIB knowledge is assumed
===
Warnings:
* this has been developed on a PowerMac 7100/66 with MacOS 7.5.1 and MacTCP 2.0.6 (and OT up to 1.1); also I've personally seen versions of SMAP runnning happily on a standard Mac Plus with MacOS 6.0.4 and MacTCP 1.1.1 (with SMAP 1.0, all this used to fit onto one bootable floppy!), and on an 8500 running Open Transport 1.0.8; others have reported that other combinations work ok, but I can't guarantee anything…
* this is a development release. Although it's been lightly tested, don't be too surprised if you encounter problems, or if the program seems sluggish or quirky. If you do have difficulties making something work, please send a reasonable quantity of detail (including if possible the exact text of any odd error messages you see) to me at 'DMatthews@globeandmail.ca' - I can't fix something unless you tell me it's broken. Thanks in advance for your help.
===
Recent modifications:
[1.1, wide release 9 July 96]
* no significant changes
[1.1b3, 19 June 96]
* quick fix to two-count'em-two side effect bugs in that last change to the Cloudness… dialog (blush)
[1.1b2, 17 June 96]
* fixed a cosmetic glitch in the About SMAP… box
* allowing non-default read communities to be entered in the Cloudness… dialog
* disallowing commas in the default read community
* Apple confirmed the OT bug I was experiencing, and confirmed that my workaround strategy was OK
* the bring-to-front-on-timeout option now works for both UDP timeouts and for ping timeouts
[1.1b1,as of 15 March 96]
* relinked with the OT 1.1b16 SDK libraries
* Edit:Show Details now shows the input + output share of the interface percent utilization, as well as in/out/total thousands-of-bits-per-second
* fixed wrong-pointsize bug when displaying device names in IPX/AppleTalk/IP views
* tweaking the height of textwindow vertical scrollbars (does TEGetHeight really work?)
* Open Transport startup errors are now reported
[1.1d3, version number created for wide test release 18 Feb 96]
[1.1d2, as of 18 Feb 96]
* native support for Open Transport
* can now map IPX networks, if you're cautious about it
* new Selfishness option to read large MIB tables (like sdMatrixTable) more quickly
* new option to keep zero-traffic pairs out of the RMON Matrix details window
* temporarily disabled Etc:Logging:Log DNS names till I implement some sort of caching
* non-OT PPC pinging now works reliably
* Finder Prints now work
* if there is a map selection, Copy now copies the selection instead of the whole map
* fixed some ancient scrolling glitches
[1.1d1, as of 5 January 1996]
* now able to do some primitive MIB compiling; browsing etc will now work by object name as well as by number
* now that ICeTEe works on my Mac, I've been able to make my mailto URL, and the SIVC download URLs command-clickable
* a few of the dialogs are now explicitly modeless
* can now do Simple Internet Version Control auto and manual queries
* device polling is now considerably faster
* now starting to get compatible with Open Transport (version 1.0.8) - not there yet though
* SNMP traps to your Mac are now logged, albeit in a primitive manner
* syslog messages to your Mac are now logged as well [why did I do this? what earthly use could this be?]
* can now append monitor-window entries to disk as they are received
* can now monitor events on a selection of devices, as well as on all devices
* can now restrict device discovery to particular IP address ranges
* new option 'pile up interfaces' so large routers don't end up straddling the whole map
* added a 60ths-of-a-second counter near the start of each log entry
* can now ping devices as well as polling them, to boost responsiveness; added a ping control menu
* can now browse MIB tables in tabular form
* can now view logical networks as RMON matrixSDTable objects (for now, it's assumed for bandwidth-calculation purposes that these tables come from 10 Mbps ethernet...)
* can now instrument logical networks via RMON agents
* fixed an old timing problem that caused very fast Macs to hang when resolving names
* fixed an old clipping problem that used to occasionally cause displays to get messed up
* background work now continues through most of the modal dialogs
* bandwidth usage calculations now take account of ethernet framing bits
* interfaces now go yellow and red along with their devices
* reorganized the commands into hierarchical menus (now this app will never work on a Mac 512. oh well...)
* there's now help in the Help menu
[1.0.1, as of 2 November 95]
* can now instrument logical networks via the mib-2 repeater mib; Hubness/Cloudness dialog revised accordingly
[1.0, released to info-mac 1 August 95]
* no code changes, just a version change and a bit of tinkering with the documentation
[1.0fc3, wide release on 22 July 95]
* fixed a couple of cosmetic problems with the Primer and the Suggest dialog (how many versions of Chicago are there, anyway?)
* the start of the discovery process no longer generates a spurious error message for some MacTCP configurations
* device-yellow status now goes away ASAP, instead of lingering till the next device MIB query
[1.0fc2, wide release on 8 July 95]
* remedied a couple of Open problems which caused clouds to open wider than necessary
* now making sure the front window's fully updated before issuing the Save-before-closing dialog
* resizing object text whenever the object is resized
* added an example to the SMAP primer
[1.0fc1, which started as 1.0b4, released 2 July 95]
* cosmetic changes to the About SMAP and the Insert device dialogs
* avoided some more potential duplicate window names
[1.0b3 was released 20 June 95]
* a few things now work considerably faster
[1.0b2 was released 15 June 95]
* added a workaround for the broken SNMP agent in v8.1 of the old proteon p4200 software
* and made it harder for other evil agents to confuse us
* and added a Log:Save scrambled datagrams command to help debug bad packets
* connectors will be grayed out till their type is initially determined
* a new Edit:Alarm patterns command, for those with colour vision problems, or with b&w screens (hey! I'm adding functionality when beta testing's already started! somebody stop me!)
* added balloon help for the finder icon and for the application menus
* the device read community names are now saved along with the map (oops)
* new option, Remove redundant devices, normally on, but overrideable to avoid certain problems.
* a few items were shuffled around in the Map menu, for clarity
* added a scrollbar refresh after each Clear
* when an auto-delete kicks in, it no longer deselects your current selection
* better handling of wide printouts
* and we now avoid duplicate window names
[1.0b1, which started out as 1.0d5, was released 5 June 95]
* Monitor window startup is now less painfully slow
* Log-scale utilization is now displayed more usefully
* reduced some distracting blinking in connector refreshes
* new Window menu (which doesn't yet work well if two windows have the same name…)
* plus you can now tab and shift-tab between windows
* some other menus have been renamed and their contents have been shuffled to make more conceptual sense
* new Log:Log scrambled datagrams command, to help debug weird old SNMP devices
* new Log:Log events command, to help track device up/downness and communication errors
* new Etc:Move to timed-out devices command, to help you to see a device as it times out
* new Edit:Monitor events command, to show you just the ups downs and errors in the log
* you can now resize objects
* you can now drag-select objects
* and you can drag objects or the selection rectangle as either filled shapes or gray outlines (no marching ants yet, though…)
* redefined which kind of traffic appears on each side of the connectors, hopefully this is less confusing how
* potential new Discover: ipForwardTable command, for use when manufacturers start to abandon ipRouteTable
* potential new Discover: NetToMediaTable command, to discover ordinary non-router IP nodes (caution! this will create a big messy map with lots of nodes and little practical use)
* actually, I've disabled those two new Discover commands till SMAP becomes a bit more robust - it's too easy to overload your Mac with those discovery modes...
* fixed some nagging bugs re application switching and scrollbar highlighting and device renaming and duplicate devices
* installed a less-deceitful fix for the QuickDraw/68K/CloseRgn() inadequacy that was worked around in the previous release
* you can now specify a device's read community as you add the device
[1.0d4 was released 29 May 95]
* clicking on a connector line now selects something useful
* new command, Edit:Copy log, to copy the entire log to the clipboard
* new command, Defaults: Timeout threshold, lets you specify the number of timeouts on a device that'll cause it to go to condition yellow
* abandoned the 'packets' view, not especially useful, starting to experiment with some sort of (logscale?) absolute-utilization view instead
* new Font menu
* default preferences are prettier
* you're warned when settings from earlier versions of SMAP have to be abandoned
* at startup, and every day or so afterwards, SMAP will remind you that it's not yet a public release. This behaviour will probably disappear for the shareware release.
* the datagram log size limit now works
* better reaction to log memory problems
* fixed Cancel bug in some Save... and Save As... dialogs
* now preventing duplicate cloud names
* fixed text printing, mostly; pages still break in midline
* fixed map printing, mostly; still needs scaling for overwide maps, and some extra work to handle the colour stuff
* fixed a horizontal scrollbar sizing bug
* save now works more than once with text windows
* installed a workaround fora QuickDraw inadequacy which used to crash your 68K Mac when you attempted to use long connectors at certain angles (sheesh)
[1.0d3 was the first public release, 22 May 95]
===
Known awkwardnesses (to be fixedsomeday, maybe...):
* If you define that a cloud can be instrumented by an RMON agent, then you later redefine the cloud to be instrumented by some simpler kind of agent, SMAP doesn't entirely forget about the cloud's RMONness.
* Plus the scrollbar height of monitor windows grows too large after several days operation
* when unsigned counters wrap around, SMAP treats their deltas as zero. this is a bit difficult to fix...
* a few devices think an 18-object snmp query is 'tooBig'; SMAP needs to adapt and send multipart datagrams
* and i need to schedule another session with the profiler to see if anything can be significantly sped up
* when connectors get really thick they get kind of ugly, perhaps they should be clipped more pleasingly
* you can't tell SMAP to forget about a device; if you try to add a bogus device to a map, SMAP will remember it and will retry the add on any of an assortment of future occasions; if you're bothered by this you have to save/quit/restart
* probably a problem trying to run this via MAE, the SunOS-based MacOS emulator
* perhaps a problem with some MacPPP configurations (which I cannot debug till I get PPP at my site; looks like this won't happen as soon as I thought…)
Candidate features for the next minor and major revisions:
* <you tell me...>
Not gonna do it:
* SNMP over AppleTalk, or over IPX
* bar charts
* proprietary MIBs (except for basic hub traffic/error stats, which can be based on anybody's MIB)
* SNMP set commands (except maybe someday for RMON control)
===
So, what about Intermapper?
* jeez, you spend a few months' spare time developing an application because nothing like it's available anywhere, then the day after you post a usenet call for testers, you stumble across the news that some other guy's been working on the same thing. Oh well. I just found out about Intermapper this morning [22 May 95]. It looks like a nice design, and I wish success to its developer. If you haven't tried it yet, you can download a demo alpha release via:
* at first glance, it seems that SMAP and Intermapper cover a lot of the same ground; each has some functionality that the other lacks. Personally, I think Intermapper's prettier and more ambitious, but SMAP's more focussed. But it's up to you......
