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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: feature idea - feedback wanted
From:       Carlo Wood <carlo () runaway ! xs4all ! nl>
Date:       1999-02-15 1:06:04
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| It would be a BIG mistake for core KDE components to lose
| the current (pretty good) cross-platform capabilities. As such,
| sys admin tools should not be part of the KDE (the desktop).

Agreed.  Nevertheless, there are user programs that need to
know if they should try to use internet at that moment or
not. I agree that such a thing doesn't make much sense in a
multi-user environment - and thus only when kde is being run
on personal computer - but it is still needed for the
applications to be able to find out if one is online in
those cases.

I am sure you will agree that the following design is
a solution that doesn't mix admin and user application,
but is just a framework that shows what needs to be
added to KDE in order to give the (user) application a
hook to find out about being on-line or not.

.----------------------------------------------------------,
|                    The internet                          |
`----------------------------------------------------------'
                           |
			   |
.----------------------------------------------------------,
|                      Firewall                            |
`----------------------------------------------------------'
        |                    |                     |
        |                    |                     |
  .-----------,        .-----------,         .-----------,
  |    PC1    |        |    PC2    |         |    PC3    |
  `-----------'        `-----------'         `-----------'       

In this general case, it will be clear that there shouldn't
be any KDE specific applications needed on the Firewall,
simply because there are too many firewalls and we can't
design something that will work on all platforms.

A lot of firewalls are UNIX however, and we can assume that
the firewall knows when the line to the internet is up
or not.  The admin of the firewall can notify, using the
internal network, a kde deamon on each of the PCs that
runs KDE (or broadcast a packet(?)).

That way, each PC that runs KDE will know if the network
is up or down.

What we need to design now is one daemon with two interfaces:

1) The interface towards the firewall - which will be a socket.
2) The interface towards local KDE applications.

The responsibilities are then devided as follows:

- The admin of the firewall is responsible for the scripts
  on the firewall that need to broadcast when the network
  is up or down.  We don't have to design that.
- The sys admin of the PC's that run KDE need to configure
  a kde specific deamon that listens to these broadcasts.
- The user will need to configure their applications
  whether or not to use this daemon.

Comments?  Ideas?

-- 
 Carlo Wood  <carlo@runaway.xs4all.nl>

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