Deploying, failover and redundant component setups and proactively resolving network component failures is the key to maximize the uptime of any network or service. The framework is a low cost, notification and action framework, which has been built, using simple scripting language and open source messaging tools to help network administrators to proactively administer complex networks and thus maximize the network service uptimes. The framework consists of 5 layers designed to achieve our goal of proactively administered services to maximize network service uptime. Following layers have been identified:

• Feedback Administered Services layer: This layer consists of all the network services that are hosted on any organizational network and user feedback based administration approach is used to maintain the services.
• Monitoring layer: This layer consists of various system tools which can be used to monitor status of various services which need to be proactively administered.
• Status Analyzer and Even Dispatcher layer: This layer consists of various logics in the form of scripts supported by the host OS. The scripts mainly perform functions required for analyzing the status information passed on by the monitoring layer and dispatches related events to the next upper layer.
• Notification and Action layer: This layer consists of two parts namely the notification module and the action module:
  • a. Notification Module: This layer consists of various scripts and generates notification alerts which are passed on to various messaging plugins.
  • b. Action Module: This layer consists of various scripts to generate the required setup configuration files, based on the received events, which are passed on to the next upper layer.
• Messaging plugins and setup configuration modifier layer: This layer consists of various messaging plugins like Email, SMS, HTML and Windows Systray. The setup configuration modifier which is a part of the layer is responsible for copying the configuration files generated by the action module to the actual directories and restarting the service.

Backup restore is a user friendly squirrelmail plugin to restore user data from folder like Maildir, mail and Maildir/.Sent from the backup data, as per the data backup policy at RRCAT. It is primarily aimed at reducing the administrator’s hassle of data restoration. This plug in has only administrator level access. It has features like seamless integration with any squirrel mail installation, authentication for administrator access, easy to use interface, various checks have been incorporated in plug in like empty home directory, backup file modification date for retrieving latest backup etc., logs of all restorations command history. It is developed in Php and shell script on Linux OS platform.

Check_logs is a squirrelmail plugin to analyze log files generated by qmail, MTA(Mail Transfer Agent) and generate reports on a per user basis. It has the following features:

• Seamless integration with any squirrelmail installation
• Effortlessly analyses qmail based logs placed in a directory or a set of directories.
• Provides filtering facility for negation of email addresses
• Provides administrators the facility to check email transactions of other users also. Admin users can be defined in config.php.
• Email address seperator and negator used in the filter are user definable in config.php.
• Can handle multiple recipients email transactions.
• Output can be altered using sorttable columns for various fields like date, time, size of email, email address and status of delivery.
• Final output contains a brief summary of all the email transactions flitered by the user.

Bash scripts have been written on linux (RHEL 3.0) using iptables advanced routing features and Ultramonkey package to provide multiple link load balancing and failover operations for Internet access to/from our center.

Web uploads Folder is a user friendly utility to automate procedure of making files available for downloading on external web servers. Currently it is configured as to upload required files from Z drive to Web servers for downloading purpose from outside. Files those are required to be made available for downloading is copied to web upload folder of z drive. Web upload folder has authenticated access from every users desktop PC. A web based interface is developed for Upload folder moderator. It displays listing of files including sub directories recursively. Moderator can select files from listing which to be made available for downloading. Email address of recipient can be entered for each file on web interface. Email containing the URL of the file is sent on entered email address after submitting the form. At backend scripts are written to make selected files available on external web servers for downloading purpose. It is developed in Php and shell script on Linux OS platform.

A high capacity Network attached storage (NAS) has been made accessible from users desktop at our centre using a systray based application on windows platform. Program has been developed in JAVA and SWING to easily access the NAS as and when required.

LDAP has been used extensively for user authentication for single sign on of various facilities at our center. Using HTML and FORMs a web based ldap password change utility has been developed which allows users to change their password securely.

Linux BASH scripts have been written to modify DNS records for changing web server IP records based on the status of multiple internet links connected to our center.

A multi platform, customizable and uniform administrative interface based DHCP server for RRCATNet was needed. RRCATNet is a network of 2200 nodes with more than 42 networks interconnected together. It was foreseen that in near future network of every building will need to be allocated dynamic IP addresses. DHCP servers on various platforms have different ways of configuration and that too without any user-friendly interface. RRCATNet is spread over multiple buildings with variety of server flavors. To use various servers as DHCP servers, a common and user-friendly interface for DHCP server configuration was needed. Thus an effort was made to develop such a system.

E-mail accounts given to employees, visitors, and other temporary e-mail accounts, are dynamic in nature. Information associated with the users can not be reflected on any conventional printed directory/ information book, and the same complications are involved when deletion of email record needed. To manage the whole process related to e-mail accounts creation, deletion, recording of necessary user information and its analysis over the network, a web based interface has been developed and implemented. Tools used to implement this package are HTML, shell script and PHP for front end and POSTGRES (RDBMS) for backend.

The aim of the project is to provide a web based user interface to the users of four sub- systems of precision manufacturing system so that they can efficiently collaborate with each other and thus increase the productivity and decrease the cost of precision manufacturing process. The need for such an application was felt to counter the disadvantages of floppy based collaboration approach earlier used by the sub-system users. Salient features of this application are-

• User convenience, because it is web browser based.
• Reduced data transfer time. Collaborating users only need to wait for the other user to upload the file from his PC.
• User authentication using Apache web server htaccess feature
• Centralized storage of data files, with searching options.

The aim of this application is to provide a web interface to network administrator to efficiently handle multiple links to Internet. This application provides interface to automatically/ manually divert both the incoming and outgoing web, name and mail server traffic to and from the outside world to the link of administrator's choice. The main features of the application are–

• Allows Manual/ Automatic diversion of traffic flow.
• Relieves the administrator of knowing the details of the configuration files.
• The major internet services like HTTP, PROXY, DNS and MAIL traffic can be diverted by using a simple web browser.

A system has been developed which allows to build a customizable low cost search system, useful for maintaining an attribute based database on the web and easy to implement web based attribute related search interface. It is very useful for implementing search on large databases like that of library and telephone directory. All ready made software systems like the Netscape directory server cost about lakhs of rupees. This system has been tested and is working on 1.5 lakh records of Indore Telephone Directory of BSNL.

A prototype for a 24 hours online Help Desk System was developed, which can be used by administrators on intranet and internet for automating their manual help desk systems. The following are some of the features of this prototype:

• Can be easily installed on Linux platform with a simple modem having voice commands support.
• Developed using shell scripts with switch and case statements, thus can be easily configured for other uses.
• The status of network/ internet connectivity can easily be obtained over a telephone.
• Any instructions which are of use to all the users can be recorded in voice form and be made available 24 hours for reference.

• A level-wise set of instructions can be intelligibly designed to customize help desk system. The prototype has been tested and found to be working satisfactorily. Presently we are working on developing the system in Perl and Java which will have some advanced features and user friendly graphical interfaces.

PC based experimental setups are very common in any research organization. This involves monitoring, controlling and data logging for the experiment using a PC. PC based monitoring of the results for days together have certain risk factors when carried out in the vicinity of the setup. All these demand for a remotely controlled setup. With RRCATNet extended to every building inside the campus, the objective was following:

• To remotely monitor/ control any experiment on a PC connected to RRCATNet.
• To be able to log the experimental results on a PC connected to RRCATNet.

A working prototype for Voice call notification utility over phone line busy on dialup was developed. This utility allows a person to be notified of a voice call with the caller’s phone number displayed on the users desktop while the person is using the phone line for connecting to internet. The need for such an application was felt since internet facility at RRCAT has been extended to remote buildings using dialup connectivity. Use of internet for long durations causes phone lines to be busy, which in turn leads to inaccessibility of the phone for voice communication. The prototype has been tested and found to be working satisfactorily. Presently we are working on further enhancing the utility to support both way voice communication channel with RSVP and RTP protocol features.

Following are some of the features of this prototype:

• Uses inexpensive voice modems for telecommunications and IP network integration needs.
• Based on the Server (Linux based) /client (Windows based) model.
• Uses the existing telephone exchange "Call forward when busy" feature.
• Client side application resides on Systray and presents a flashing popup window with the caller’s phone number on arrival of the call.
• Server and client side modules are purely JAVA based and make extensive use of the serial port COMM API and JMF API.
• Customizable to any small ISP setup.