Saturday June 09, 2007

Recently I wrote about an exciting new project coming to Solaris by way of the Network Auto-Magic project. I also talked about releasing a sneak peek at the promise of the Network Auto-Magic project in an upcoming OpenSolaris release. Today I am going to discuss where we are with getting this functionality into your hands.

But before we talk about releases and dates, I would like to step back a little and discuss the rationale behind the Network Auto-Magic project and the various enhancements it brings both to sysadmins as well as the so-called "end users".

The Network Auto Magic project consists of three main components. One of these is around simplifying service configuration and discovery on a network. The second is adding Network Profiles support. And the third and major component is developing a comprehensive UI to configure, automate and manage Solaris networking configuration. Let's consider each one of these is further detail.

The service discovery aspect will be implemented by enhancing the framework from Apple's Bonjour technology. One of the strengths of this technology is that it is built on top of one of the most robust and well understood internet protocols- DNS. Specifically, the technology allows applications to discover advertised services on a network. The project will deliver a public library which can be used by developers to make simple modifications to their application/service so that the services can participate in network service discovery. This reduces configuration- rather than an admin having to hard code a particular service with a certain device your application is now free to auto discover it. Eventually applications and clients can become smarter too- they can 'probe' the network on startup and unless they find a service on the network, there is no need for them to keep trying to reach a server. Like other network services delivered in Solaris, all of this functionality will be fully integrated with Service Management Facility (SMF). This component of will soon be released via an OpenSolaris build, so stay tuned!

Network profiles, the primary component of the Network Auto-Magic project are one of the ways to simplify and automate network configuration and management. They work by allowing users to specify collections of various network properties and have them be managed automatically based on different network environments. A Network Configuration Profile (NCP) will also include policy- such as which network interfaces to use, whether they should be activated automatically, and so on. At any given time, exactly one NCP and one Environment are active. Users may modify the NCP to specify how Solaris should react in a particular network environment and have the right sets of actions automatically take place. For example, if you check email at your neighborhood Starbucks you may want your laptop to connect to the WiFi access point with the correct security flavor automatically, start DHCP on it and enable DNS for host resolution. You want to turn off wired interfaces and perhaps have the display appear scrambled to anyone besides you! (We are still working on the latter. ) Then when you go back to your office and connect to a wired connection, you might expect to shut down the WiFi interface, enable certain services (such as NFS file sharing or NIS for host resolution) and have your browser use the proxy servers defined via Gconf.

Finally, lets discuss the third component of the project- the comprehensive UI. The first thing long time users of Solaris would notice- when the entire project is delivered- is that we are not just delivering incremental ease of use by cleaning up redudant code or even replacing multiple layers of CLI with a "high-level" CLI. NWAM will do both of those but it certainly does not stop there. It also delivers a comprehensive GUI with the same look and feel as the Java Desktop System. We have published a Flash based prototype based on our UI specification. Its not functionally complete and some aspects are likely to change in the final version but it does give you an idea of what you might see. And thats not all- there will be also be a separate Status Notification GUI that will give you a quick snapshot of the current network status. For example, it will graphically display the signal strength of the selected WiFi network. Routine tasks such as enabling or disabling an interface (on multiple homed machines) no longer require invoking (or knowledge of) complex CLI such as ifconfig(1M) or dladm(1M).

Now, for the sneak peak! Starting with Solaris Express Developer Edition 5/07, you will be able to preview some of the Network Auto-Magic functionality. If you are installing Solaris on a supported laptop this sneak peek is for you. (Specifically, there is a limitation that only one link is active at a time.) The major new functionality supported with this release of Solaris Express Developer Edition is WiFi support and with Network Auto Magic it just works "out of the box". All flavors of WEP and WPA2 are supported for the first time. Obviously not all laptops are supported, but common WiFi chipset implementations such as Atheros and Intel Centrino are. Solaris Express Developer Edition Release 5/07 will be available around mid-June 2007. Let's explore how the NWAM preview works.

This release of Solaris Developer Express includes the 'NWAM daemon' which allows for automated network configuration on laptops and desktop machines. This daemon monitors an available Ethernet interface and automatically enables DHCP on it. If no interface is plugged into a wired network, the NWAM daemon conducts a wireless scan and queries the user for a WiFi access point to connect to via a popup GUI. Once you select a WiFi access point and connect to it successfully that choice will be saved in a file. The next time you are in the vicinity of that WiFi network, Solaris will connect to it without user intervention. For now, there is no profile support so you wouldn't be able to do the things I described in the Starbucks example above. Also, wired interfaces are preferred over wireless, although this is easily changed. For further details, please see the nwamd man page.

While we cannot talk about the schedule for when the rest of this functionality will be available we are currently working hard to ensure it meets with the expectations of the Solaris user community. We would love to hear your experience with the Network Auto Magic project and indeed all of new Solaris. It certainly isn't your grandfather's Solaris any more and with your input we hope to make it even easier to use.