[AG-DEV] AG3 Bridge Changes

[Todd Zimmerman]

Hey!  Cool!

It's like a checklist of everything I wanted... is it Christmas already? ;-)

A couple of questions:

Is this fully interoperable with the current 3.02 install?
Have you tested on any platforms otehr than Windows?  I'd be happy to test on Macs and Fedora on
this end.
How can I get a copy - where are the files available?

Cheers,

Todd

-- 
Collaboration & Visualization Technician
WestGrid - www.westgrid.ca
IRMACS - www.irmacs.com
Ph. 604.268.6979
Todd Zimmerman - toddz at sfu.ca



Andrew A Rowley wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> I have made some changes to the bridge support in AG3.
> 
> A summary of the changed functionality is as follows:
> 
>  - The bridge cache is always loaded at start-up (so you have a list of bridges even if the registry is down).  The registries are then searched, and any new bridges are added to the cache and pinged.
> 
>  - Changed the bridge "unique id" to be made up of the bridge name, host and port so that bridges that are restarted every day don't clog up the list with multiple entries (there appear to be lots of these).
> 
>  - Bridges are pinged in the background or when a new bridge is found when the registry is searched.  Unreliable bridges are therefore not pinged on startup, only during the background pinging.
> 
>  - Added an option to rank the bridges according to user preference (default is still by ping time).  Initially this will be by ping time from the first loading of the bridges (i.e. new bridges after the first bridges have been loaded on the first run of the client will go to the back of the list regardless of ping time).  This will avoid closer bridges that you have not opened to your firewall getting in the way of those that you have.
> 
>  - Added options to "Preferences..." to allow the user to choose if they are ordering bridges by ping time, and to allow them to change the frequency of the background pinging (initially 120 seconds)
> 
>  - Added buttons to "Preferences..." to allow the user to change the bridge order if not ordering by ping time, and also to get additional bridges (like the client does on start-up), refresh the ping times, order the user preference list by ping time, and to purge the bridge cache (which causes the same operation as the first load of the client, so user preferences are lost).
> 
>  - Removed any hints of ordering bridges from the registry client - this now gives you all the bridges all the time (so you don't get missing bridges).
> 
>  - Fixed the interface in the Preferences... for having multiple bridge registries.  I have removed the "registries that you are not allowed to remove" from this - if you want to allow the user to alter the registries, you have to allow them to remove the default registry (this would make the AGSC registry unworkable otherwise)!
> 
>  - I have also removed the check that was added to ensure that bridges registries only contain one peer - again this breaks the AGSC registry, and will do so further when we add our own backup peer to this.
> 
> This has been tested on Windows somewhat (although I couldn't get a connection to an AG3 server with the CVS codebase - it works when added on to 3.0.2 though).
> 
> Let me know if anyone has any questions about this.
> 
> Andrew :)
> 
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