Here, in this distant corner of the World Wide Web, during the Summer of 1999 I documented my accomplishments, astonishments, and (most of all) my bewilderments as I worked with Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan on some research projects.  Periodic status reports were reported throughout the summer, and a nice, useful (hopefully) set of web pages now exist that encapsulate what I did.

Perhaps for my own benefit more than anything else, here's a malleable list of projects and goals that kept me focused during my research.  This shows basically everything I covered this summer:

• Performance/Bottleneck analysis of HTTP protocol.
• Run timing benchmarks in a controlled network environment.
• Utilize both persistent and non-persistent styles of HTTP connections.
• Measure other variables that can be altered.
• Wherever possible, use student-developed code in place of commercial products.
• Check consistency of results with "well-known" HTTP problems.
• Implement RIP routing protocol.
• Develop a robust implementation of the RIP routing protocol that goes above and beyond most kernel implementations by virtue of its presentation of information.
• Develop and test in a controlled network environment.
• It should properly interact with commercial RIP implementations.
• Code should be of a very high quality, and excellently documented, and written in the greatness that is the Java programming language.
• Extend the idea to where multiple implementations can run on a single workstation and interact as if they were running on a wide area network.
• Possibly for future use in an advanced network protcols course.
• Develop future coursework.
• Create a lesson plan that takes advantage of the NEL.
• Try to integrate other work done this summer into the assignment.
• Lab should be properly set up for easy use by future students.

At significant times, I posted accomplishments, problems, and prospective plans for the remaining weeks.  Oftentimes, the text in these updates was the forerunner to the more complete and comprehensive project pages listed in the next section.

Monday, June 7 -- The semester gets fired up, I meet with Chris a couple of times, I get acquainted with the Network Engineering Lab, and this web space first comes to life.

Monday, June 14 -- I wire up my very own Intranet testbed, freak out when routing protcols go crazy on me, and prepare to take the final benchmark readings for HTTP.

Tuesday, June 22 -- I make mesurements of HTTP, get frustrated with the necessity of learning curves, and spin my wheels as I try to move to the next project and deal with the ultra-self-paced nature of this work.

Tuesday, July 6 -- I start the massive RIP project, and I make some good progress remembering and using the great Java programming language.

Monday, July 19 -- The RIP project comes alive after many long hours of coding.

Monday, August 9 -- The webspace doubles in size, everything finally comes together in a very satisfying way.

Each one of my "major" projects has a page unto itself.  Here they are:

• HTTP 1.1 versus 1.0  - Van Jacobson once asked, "How do you kill the Internet?"  "Simple, invent the World Wide Web."  HTTP 1.0's wastefulness of network resources is infamous.  But is version 1.1 really helping?
• Routing Update Protocol: RIP -- Well, this easily became my favorite "pet" project.  A fully windowed, multi-threaded implementation of RIP.  Once completed, a few tests were conducted to quantify convergence times for RIP, and everything was fully documented.
• The Joys of Wide Area Networking  - For the network enthusiast who knows the theory but wants to understand wires, routers, and hubs.  Since I was frustrated to be in this position just under a year ago, I'd like to share my unique growth experience to help those like myself.
• Future Class Coursework -- Basically, the goal of this summer's work was to develop an assignment that can be used in a future network protocol class.  This is the "lesson plan" I can up with, if you will.