[mat-wg] Introducing the Android Atlas Client and myself

Hello!

Just as Stefan Wahl wrote, I am the guy who initially came forward with
the idea of implementing an Android client for the RIPE Atlas.

My professional background is as a programmer of various media systems
with a lot of experience in mobile applications, high-profile showroom
and media installations as well as related topics.

Beyond that, being a jack of many trades, I also have experience in
network operations and service hosting, both professionally and in
various voluntary contexts such as open source projects.

Having heard of RIPE Atlas and knowing a lot of people from the network
community, I decided to step forward and offer to implement an Android
application that allows proper mobile use of the Atlas.

Stefan Wahl of ECIX was so kind as to announce my project at RIPE64. I
am now hoping to collect further feedback.

For further discussion, I have pasted my initial draft concept below.

Feel free to comment, propose features and discuss. If you wish, you can
also contact me directly about this project.

Greetings
 Ingo

=========================================================================

RIPE Atlas Android Client - Concept Proposal
(C) 2012 Ingo Albrecht <prom at berlin.ccc.de>

Revision 2012-04-16 21:00 CEST


GENERAL CONCEPT

The client should implement a proper subset of the features present in
the web interface, limiting itself to the most common and most
operationally useful features.

As such, emphasis should be given to "general" information that has use
in network operations, as opposed to "specific" detailed information.
Display should concentrate on displaying "current" information as
opposed to browsing history, for which a laptop is much better suited.

As an example, consider display of per-probe data. The client should
display basic probe information and current/recent measurement results,
not a whole set of graphs.

Also, emphasis should be given to search as opposed to full-list
browsing, facilitating ad-hoc use.


DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Development would progress in monthly stages, accompanied by public
release from the second stage on. The feature set specified in this
document should be achievable within 3 to 5 such stages.

This concept would be revised during each stage, allowing for
integration of feedback.

As the developer, I propose that the source code for the project,
including history, be published via github or similar.


FEATURES

Base features:

* Display of announcements

* Display of "My Probes" list
 * Display as list
 * Display map of own probes

* Search for probes by AS, IP4/IP6 prefix, country
 * Result display as list
 * Result display as map

* Notification when a users own probes go down or stay down
 * Configurable "acceptable downtime"
 * Configurable "silent times" based on phone timezone

* Probe view (reachable from probe lists and maps)
 * Display standing data
 * Display most recent measurements


Basic browsing features:

* View standard measurements (equivalent of "Maps" view)
 * Fixed destination measurements (reachability and RTT)
   * Limitable by probe AS and prefix
   * Limitable by destination
 * DNS measurements (instance choice and RTT)
   * Limitable by probe AS and prefix
   * Limitable by root instance continent
   * Limitable by specific root instance

UDM features:

* Display of configured UDMs
* Adding/removing UDMs
* Display of most recent UDM results
 * Possibly with history
 * Maybe with graphs

Features not considered:

Display of coverage information (not terribly useful ad-hoc).