Change History (nam)

nam-1.0a3 [PENDING RELEASE DATE]

nam-1.0a2

Release with ns-2.1b1

• [haoboy] Mon Nov 10 10:14:23 PST 1997
  • Fixed bugs in packet.{cc,h} caused by setting edge length != delay.
  • Updated scripts in ex/
  • Updated nam man page.
  • Fixed bugs in monitoring dropped packets
• [johnh]Tue Oct 28 17:00:05 PST 1997
  Re-autoconf'ed with configure.in.TclCL. Extra code from nam.tcl removed.
• [mjh] Wed Oct 8 1997
• Moved all view zoom and pan code from Tcl to view object to allow us to have multiple views.
• Fixed all code that assumes only a single view of the netmodel
• Implemented multiple views - currently in a separate window but might change this soon.
• [mjh] Sun Oct 5 1997
• Added code to display the current time in timeline graphs
• Support for bi-directional and loss timeline graphs added.
• Assorted minor bug fixes
• [mjh] Sat Oct 4 1997
• Separated netview into a general purpose view and a special purpose. netview.
• Added new classes to support producing graphs of various parameters.
• Integrated graphs into UI (click on a link to see them).
• Fixed minor bugs in netview zooming and X Event handling.
• Changed tracefile format to be more TCL-like to make it easier to handle events with text fields or embedded TCL.
[mjh] Thu Oct 2 1997
• activated John's view menu and added code to hide or show the monitors, annotations and autolayout panels
• [johnh]Wed Oct 1 19:34:40 PDT 1997
  Menubar and about dialog added.
• [haoboy] Wed Oct 1 19:20:53 pdt 1997
  Added annotation list box.
• [mjh] Wed Oct 1 1997
• fixed incorrect value of M_PI in sincos.h
• improved placement of agents so they don't overlap lines and don't often overlap each other if possible.
• [haoboy] Tue Oct 1 11:14:00 PDT 1997
• "Return" key is no longer associated with 'single-step'.
• Use right button to add monitor, instead of left button. Left button will be used later to move nodes or node groups.
• Implemented automatic graph layout.
• Add a control bar to adjust automatic layout parameters.
• Default configuration file is .nam.tcl in current directory. A sample .nam.tcl is included as ex/sample.nam.tcl, together with short explainations.
• Copied config.h, random.{cc,h}, rng.{cc,h} from ns-2.
• [mjh] Tue Sep 30 1997
• added zoom functionality to netview (mostly added in tcl, but could easily be moved to c++ later if we think it necessary)
• [mjh] Mon Sep 29 1997
• replaced old time slider with one based on a canvas to make it more obvious what does what (expecially when we add scrollbars for zooming)
• [johnh] Tue Sep 16 14:49:30 PDT 1997

ns_to_nam.tcl "h" support improved, examples directory added.
• [haoboy] Wed Sep 3 19:56:34 pdt 1997

Minor bug fixes. Now nodes can start with different colors and change color later on.
• [johnh]Wed Sep 3

Extended nam_angle to support arbitrary angles with ``180deg'' syntax. Patch from Vikram Visewswariah .
• [johnh] Fri Aug 15 10:44:22 PDT 1997

Updated configuration code to current ns-2 status (but not merged)
• [EA] Thu Aug 14 11:15:01 PDT 1997

Added session level annotation.
• [SM] Thu Aug 14 09:52:14 PDT 1997
• Removed "gen" directory and contents from repository since these files are automatically generated.
• Added Nam.suppressMonitors configuration resource which if set to ``true'' suppresses the display of the monitor subpanel in the user interface (to save screen real estate when not needed). The user should be able to insert and remove dynamically this panel from the GUI.
• Added a hook to source $HOME/.nam.tcl if it exists.
• Added "yesno" and "resource" helper procs.
• [SM] Sun Aug 10 15:11:27 PDT 1997
• First cut at port to win32 API (should work under both Windows 95 and NT). Seems to work okay except for an infinite loop that occurs fairly often when manipulating time in the backward direction.
• Added a number of workarounds for Visual C++. It treats classes and structures different for example and can produce link errors if a type is referred to both ways.
• Cleaned up code in netview.cc to use more Tkisms in place of Xisms. It previously compiled under windows but didn't work. Tk shielding made it work.
• [SM] Spring 1997
• Somewhere in here Mark Handley added a bunch of nice features and improved the file format.
• [SM] Fri Dec 27 1996
• Ported to our local autoconf environment; we now share configure.in.* files across all of our research software.
• [SM] Eliminated pt.h since wired-in packet types no longer used.
• [SM] Ported to MIT's Object Tcl framework and eliminate CommandTable class etc. Eliminated time_atof and bw_atof, whose functions are now handled in tcl.

nam-0.5a

[Jacobson] Tue Sep 12 04:41:15 PDT 1995
• Re-do trace format yet again: all packet related records (h + - d) now have same format:
time src dst size attr type conv id where src & dst are the immediate src & dst node names, size is the size in bytes, attr are drawing attributes (color # in lower 8 bits, bit 8 set if should be drawn hollow rather than filled), type is a 7 char 'type' string, conv is a 31 character 'conversation' identifier and id is an integer packet identifier.
• can now right click on anything (packet, queue item, drop) & get info about it.
• added 'ncolor' and 'ecolor' commands to set node & edge colors
• made 'v' command just execute it's text as a tcl expr as suggested by McCanne.

---

nam-0.4a

[Orayani] Summer 1995
• add support for graphing, packet id's, and synchronized animations.

---

nam-0.3a

[SM] Decemeber 1994
• Changed trace file input format. New format is identical to format output by ns.
• Eliminated pic-style language parses. Now topology and layout are created by user-defined tcl procedure (nam_config).
• Reworked layout traversal to operate on native objects instead of temporary ones.
• Changed node/edge object interface so that you first create them and later place and adjust their size.
• Changed links so that they explicitly know their bandwidth and can map a packet size into a transmission time (so we don't need trasmission times in the trace file anymore).
• Made many improvements to user interface.

---

Origin

Although development of the LBNL Network Animator nam began in 1991, it was not widely released for many years because the project was consistently superceded by a number of our other research/development efforts. Steven McCanne wrote the original version of the nam in February 1991 during his year off from school (between undergraduate and graduate degrees) when he worked full-time as a staff scientist in the Network Research Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This early version of nam was first prototyped in C using Tango, an environment for algorithm animation from Brown University. Shortly thereafter, McCanne ported nam to C++ and the Stanford Interviews graphics library. Within this C++/Interviews framework, the principal application design and architecture was experimented with, refined, and developed. In winter 1991, McCanne ported nam to Interviews-3.0, and improved the underlying design to support multiple views of a single animation. In fall 1993, McCanne ported nam to Tcl/Tk and further improved the software architecture and user interface. In winter 1994, McCanne once again re-visited the nam design, this time to improve its interaction with his network simulator ns (version 0.3a above). In summer 1995, Marylou Orayani enhanced nam with a number of features to carry our her U.C. Berkeley Master's project, which involved the automatic animation of real TCP/IP conversations and detailed case studies of a number of actual pathological traffic patterns (version 0.4a above). Throughout this time, Van Jacobson contibuted a number of improvements to the user inteface and trace file format and added new features.

This change history was not consistently maintained until winter 1996, when we first created the web-page form of this document. 

---

[Return to ?]

• [haoboy]
  
  • "Return" key is no longer associated with 'single-step'.
  • Use right button to add monitor, instead of left button. Left button will be used later to move nodes or node groups.
  • Implemented automatic graph layout.
  • Add a control bar to adjust automatic layout parameters.
  • Default configuration file is .nam.tcl in current directory. A sample .nam.tcl is included as sample.nam.tcl.
  • Copied config.h, random.{cc,h}, rng.{cc,h} from ns-2.
  • [johnh] Tue Sep 16 14:49:30 PDT 1997
    ns_to_nam.tcl "h" support improved, examples directory added.
  • [haoboy] Wed Sep 3 19:56:34 pdt 1997
    Minor bug fixes. Now nodes can start with different colors and change color later on.
  • [johnh]Wed Sep 3
    Extended nam_angle to support arbitrary angles with ``180deg'' syntax. Patch from Vikram Visewswariah .
  • [johnh] Fri Aug 15 10:44:22 PDT 1997
    Updated configuration code to current ns-2 status (but not merged)
  • [EA] Thu Aug 14 11:15:01 PDT 1997
    Added session level annotation.
  • [SM] Thu Aug 14 09:52:14 PDT 1997
    
    • Removed "gen" directory and contents from repository since these files are automatically generated.
    • Added Nam.suppressMonitors configuration resource which if set to ``true'' suppresses the display of the monitor subpanel in the user interface (to save screen real estate when not needed). The user should be able to insert and remove dynamically this panel from the GUI.
    • Added a hook to source $HOME/.nam.tcl if it exists.
    • Added "yesno" and "resource" helper procs.
  • [SM] Sun Aug 10 15:11:27 PDT 1997
    
    • First cut at port to win32 API (should work under both Windows 95 and NT). Seems to work okay except for an infinite loop that occurs fairly often when manipulating time in the backward direction.
    • Added a number of workarounds for Visual C++. It treats classes and structures different for example and can produce link errors if a type is referred to both ways.
    • Cleaned up code in netview.cc to use more Tkisms in place of Xisms. It previously compiled under windows but didn't work. Tk shielding made it work.
  • [SM] Spring 1997
    • Somewhere in here Mark Handley added a bunch of nice features and improved the file format.
  • [SM] Fri Dec 27 1996
    • Ported to our local autoconf environment; we now share configure.in.* files across all of our research software.
  • [SM] Eliminated pt.h since wired-in packet types no longer used.
  • [SM] Ported to MIT's Object Tcl framework and eliminate CommandTable class etc. Eliminated time_atof and bw_atof, whose functions are now handled in tcl.

  ---

  nam-0.5a

  [Jacobson] Tue Sep 12 04:41:15 PDT 1995
  • Re-do trace format yet again: all packet related records (h + - d) now have same format:
    time src dst size attr type conv id
    where src & dst are the immediate src & dst node names, size is the size in bytes, attr are drawing attributes (color # in lower 8 bits, bit 8 set if should be drawn hollow rather than filled), type is a 7 char 'type' string, conv is a 31 character 'conversation' identifier and id is an integer packet identifier.
  • can now right click on anything (packet, queue item, drop) & get info about it.
  • added 'ncolor' and 'ecolor' commands to set node & edge colors
  • made 'v' command just execute it's text as a tcl expr as suggested by McCanne.

  ---

  nam-0.4a

  [Orayani] Summer 1995
  • add support for graphing, packet id's, and synchronized animations.

  ---

  nam-0.3a

  [SM] Decemeber 1994
  • Changed trace file input format. New format is identical to format output by ns.
  • Eliminated pic-style language parses. Now topology and layout are created by user-defined tcl procedure (nam_config).
  • Reworked layout traversal to operate on native objects instead of temporary ones.
  • Changed node/edge object interface so that you first create them and later place and adjust their size.
  • Changed links so that they explicitly know their bandwidth and can map a packet size into a transmission time (so we don't need trasmission times in the trace file anymore).
  • Made many improvements to user interface.

  ---

  Origin

  Although development of the LBNL Network Animator nam began in 1991, it was not widely released for many years because the project was consistently superceded by a number of our other research/development efforts. Steven McCanne wrote the original version of the nam in February 1991 during his year off from school (between undergraduate and graduate degrees) when he worked full-time as a staff scientist in the Network Research Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This early version of nam was first prototyped in C using Tango, an environment for algorithm animation from Brown University. Shortly thereafter, McCanne ported nam to C++ and the Stanford Interviews graphics library. Within this C++/Interviews framework, the principal application design and architecture was experimented with, refined, and developed. In winter 1991, McCanne ported nam to Interviews-3.0, and improved the underlying design to support multiple views of a single animation. In fall 1993, McCanne ported nam to Tcl/Tk and further improved the software architecture and user interface. In winter 1994, McCanne once again re-visited the nam design, this time to improve its interaction with his network simulator ns (version 0.3a above). In summer 1995, Marylou Orayani enhanced nam with a number of features to carry our her U.C. Berkeley Master's project, which involved the automatic animation of real TCP/IP conversations and detailed case studies of a number of actual pathological traffic patterns (version 0.4a above). Throughout this time, Van Jacobson contibuted a number of improvements to the user inteface and trace file format and added new features.

  This change history was not consistently maintained until winter 1996, when we first created the web-page form of this document.

  ---

  [Return to ?]