Zack Colgan <colganzj@clarkson.edu>
Major:Computer Science
Minor:Information Technology
Class:2006

I am currently heading up the Open Network Registrar project. This project aims to produce something similar to Cisco's CNR product, and other DNS/DHCP value-added solutions. This project recently won the UVAC Collegiate Winner award in VMware's Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge! You can see the writeup for the appliance on VMware's site. There are a couple of articles about the win, here on Clarkson's News site, and on TMCnet, a tech web site that syndicated the original interview that the Watertown Daily Times did with me.

Mid-Semester Report
I have the ONR VM running on my workstation, which can be accessed at onr.woodstock.clarkson.edu. If you look at the VMware writeup, you will find everything you need to SSH into it and access it via the web interface.
I have met with Alex and discussed some things that need to be done on the project. We have some tasks to work on now - Alex will be looking at a few of the functions on the DNS pages that don't work, and I will be working on the DHCP Perl scripts that run in the background, as well as the DHCP frontend pages.
I'd like to do a lab involving Cisco routers/switches exploring BGP and EIGRP, somewhat modeled after Clarkson's core network setup.

End of Semester Report
  • I did a presentation on OpenVPN. You can find a page I made on setting it up here.
  • In the ITL/COSI labs:
    • I helped troubleshoot some network problems in the labs to more efficiently connect the 3 main switches.
    • Did some minor rewiring and cable repair.
  • Alex and I have made some progress this semester on fixing up some of the features of ONR, including:
    • Resolved problems with the login process using the wrong URL for form posting.
    • Improvements in DNS configuration to allow mapping of forward and reverse entries.
    • Implemented an initial DHCP applicator and did some work on the DHCP frontend.
    • Continuing to develop functionality based on feedback received from the VMware forum about ONR.
    • I'm trying to write a function that will provide functionality similar to the Perl Net::IPAddr module. This will allow you to give the function a list of available networks and an IP address, and return the best match. There is not currently an equivalent function in PHP, and I am currently working on making that functionality work. This will allow DNS and DHCP to easily manage the IP space they control.
I had planned on giving a demonstration on BGP and EIGRP, but due to the lab renovations, all the necessary equipment is stacked away in the server room, and I'm not even sure we have enough power to power the nodes I'd need. I've been trying to replicate the scenario I described above in the BGP-EIGRP diagram, but it is difficult to do that without the actual physical nodes. Additionally, EIGRP is a Cisco-proprietary protocol, meaning a virtual environment implemented with the Quagga routing suite will not be able to replicate the scenario.
I've been running OSPF, a protocol similar in functionality to EIGRP, on my Linux workstation and my Linux router, in order to advertise the routes available through the router that attach to various networks and VPNs attached to the router. I've learned about OSPF and how it propagates routes, and how it can propagate from other protocols, such as BGP, static routes, and kernel routes. I also ran BGP on both systems and learned how to configure it to advertise routes that are handled by each system.