Dante development survey

• Client
  
• Server

Below is a list of some possible additions. If you use or are planning to use the software, we would appreciate if you could take the time to indicate what you would like see be given a high priority. Check the box next to the options you would like implemented, and press send at the bottom when you are finished.

Note that choosing all options will not help prioritization; choosing one or two options is more likely to influence future development.

Possible additions

The server logfiles contain much usage information, including duration of sessions, amount of data transfered, protocols used, time of day, username, etc. A log analysis program could analyze the logfiles and provide a detailed visual overview of usage patterns.

A graphical interface to administer the server. This could involve including operations such as starting and stopping the server, adding rules, etc.

The server is a very suitable point for gathering statistics about network usage (SNMP, Netflow, etc.). A module with access to the data passing through the server could be used to generate statistics, for example with an SNMP interface.

Compared to router or wire-level analysis, the server has direct access to all the data passing through it without having to perform packet reassembly or similar operations. This makes it a suitable point for doing data analysis. Having a set of application level protocol decoders and an interface for accessing or manipulating the data passing through the server would make it possible for users to write specialized modules that could perform tasks such as logging Internet usage (URLs) or interfacing the server to other services such as virus killers or spam filters.

The server now supports binding of server sockets on the socks server, allowing an internal server to offer it's services to the external network without having the software running on the same machine as the socks server. One possible extension to this would be to allow load balancing, where the socks server directed server connections between a set of internal servers which were all bound to the socks server on the same port, giving a simple and reasonably clean load balancing or failover solution. (some sort of authentication is needed to gain the full benefit of this).

The server is able to store the data contents of the packets and connections that passes through it. Currently data logging is done to the standard log file, but a specialized mechanism could be added to handle storage of large amounts of data in a scalable way. An SQL-like syntax could be used to query and access the stored data.

Such as one time passwords (S/Key) or BSD authentication.

Firewall traversal/server chaining (socks servers talking to other socks servers). Is currently supported for TCP connect, but not UDP.

The latest draft for rfc1928 allows binding of UDP sockets.

Several nonstandard extensions exists in other implementations.

• traceroute. Allows the traceroute application to work through the socks server.
• ping. Allows sending/receiving of ICMP ECHO / ICMP ECHO REPLY.

Several applications come with application specific proxy protocols (e.g. realaudio). A server for these application which talked to the client using it's protocol and relayed connections through the socks server would remove the need for opening new holes to use the application in a firewall environment.

On most platforms a probably substantial improvement could be achieved by the addition of an interface similar to splice(), which allows the connection of a pair of descriptors in the kernel, removing the need for the data in the connection to pass through the user address space.

There are still several platforms which are not supported. Note that reporting problems to dante-bugs is the best way to get support for new platforms.

How do you make use of Dante?
If you have any other comments, please also provide them in the text field below.

If you wish, you can provide us with your email address, in case we have any comments or questions regarding your suggestions.
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