Centre closure

As part of a broader organisational restructure, data networking research at Swinburne University of Technology has moved from the Centre for Advanced Internet Architecture (CAIA) to the Internet For Things (I4T) Research Lab.

Although CAIA no longer exists, this website reflects CAIA's activities and outputs between March 2002 and February 2017, and is being maintained as a service to the broader data networking research community.

Greynets Toolkit Documentation

Version 0.5.8

Architecture

Toolkit components

There are a few main components that interact in order to make up the CAIA Greynet Toolkit.
  • Greynetd - the program that used PCAP to listen on VLAN interfaces to collect and process packets destined for Greynet hosts.
  • snmp_greynet - a module for the bsnmpd SNMP server that connects to greynetd in order to provide SNMP capabilties.
  • Web Interface - provides a configuration interface to the entire system.
  • ISC DHCP Server - optionally used to manage addresses on a network.
  • ISC DHCP Client - optionally used so that greynet hosts can take leases from external DHCP servers.

Configuration Files

The master configuration for the whole system is stored in XML format in the file /usr/local/etc/greynets/greynets.xml. The Web Interface is generally used to update this file. When configuration is applied or the system is restarted, configuration files for the other components of the system are regenerated with information taken from the master configuration file.

Startup / Reload process

  1. The DHCP Client and Server are stopped.
  2. The management portion of the XML config file is read, and all network settings are reconfigured to match.
  3. IPFW firewall rules are cleared and regenerated based on the configured Greynets.
  4. VLAN interfaces are reconfigured and Greynet host IPs aliased to the relevant VLAN.
  5. DHCP server configuration is regenerated. If required according to the XML file, the DHCP server is started.
  6. DHCP client configuration is regenerated.If required according to the XML file, the DHCP client is started.
  7. Greynetd configuration files are regenerated from the master XML configuration. If Greynetd is already running, a signal is sent for it to reload its configuration from files, if it isn't running, it is started.

Component Diagram

The diagram below outlines the various components of the system and how they interact.

File Locations

/usr/local/etc/greynetsGreynets configuration files
/usr/local/share/greynets/scripts General scripts used for setup/reload of the system
/usr/local/share/greynets/www Web Interface files
/usr/local/share/greynets/cgi-bin Web Interface python scripts
/var/stats PPS and BPS value files
/usr/local/bin Binaries
/usr/local/lib/greynetlib.py Main Greynets functions library
/usr/lib/snmp_greynet.so BSNMPD Module



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Last Updated: Monday 8-Dec-2008 14:42:56 AEDT | Maintained by: Amiel Heyde (amiel@swin.edu.au) | Authorised by: Grenville Armitage (garmitage@swin.edu.au)