= Design Notes for nodehandler =

== Underlying model == 
 * Broadcast
   nodehandler broadcasts each command to all the nodes using a C program

== System Parameters == 
 * Underlying traffic model: Figure out 
   * how many packets 
   * of what size 
   * and with what interarrival
 are generated by a "typical" experiment script

 * For this traffic model, test the performance in terms of packet loss, and avg. latency

== Building reliability into the protocol == 
Some thoughts on building reliability into the protocol
 1. Cumulative ACK by nodeagent every 5 packets
 2. Stagger sending of ACK's to reduce the collision domains based on 
 {{{
  N* backoff interval, where N = row no. 
 }}}
 3. nodehandler separate thread maintains a bitmap for all packets and fills a "one" for every missing packet reported
   by the nodeagent
 4. nodehandler broadcasts these missing packets after a ''timeout''
 5. This timeout is based on the time taken by all nodes to send an ACK to the nodehandler using the convention of Step 2
 

== Fetching OML xml schema ==
 * Replacet existing ruby webserver with proper Apache to serve xml files
 * nodeagents still use '''wget''' to fetch these