What
if you had a Newton WWW Server and nobody came? Are you sick of
mailing out your IP whenever you want people to come visit? This may
be the solution...
What
if you had a Newton WWW Server and nobody came? Are you sick of
mailing out your IP whenever you want people to come visit? This may
be the solution...
NPDS Tracker consists of two applications that communicate with each other.. Tracker Client (which is a NPDS plugin) and Tracker Server which is a MacOS application. When NPDS starts up, many things are pre-initialized and set up.
During this time, Tracker Client is activated by the NPDS architecture and told to register. It sends, using a specialized protocol, information needed to find your Newton on the net as well as a description of your Server. The Tracker Server records this information for later use. Your NPDS continues to start up and that's it, from your Newton's end of things.
Meanwhile, Tracker Server is busy. People who want a hyperlinked list of Newton servers are accessing it with their WWW browsers while it is also constantly monitoring the status of each Newton that has registered with it. If a set period elapses where Tracker Server can't connect to your Newt and retrieve a special page (served by Tracker Client), it is removed from the list of active Newton servers. The ususal period for this expiration is 45 minutes to one hour and a Newton is usually given up to 3 chances to respond before being removed.
Use you favorite package installer to load Tracker Client onto the same store as all the other NPDS components. Once it is configured, it functions automatically on server startup.
Setting
up Tracker Client is easy:
Once you're ready to go, open up nHTTPd and start it up as usual. The status line will progress from IDLE to INIT and puase for a bit. A NIE status dialog will pop open twice (that's Tracker doing its job), then the status line will read READY and you'll be all set. To verify that your server has registered, point your browser to http://your.newton.net/traq/ and you'll see a page pointing you to the tracker. Click the link and see what develops: if all went well, your Newton is listed happily on the remote tracker!
A Note on Tracker TCP/IP Ports:Tracker Server actually listens on two ports, one for talking to Newtons and one for serving the Tracker Listing via HTTP. The port you entered in the preferences is the Newton port and usually it's 2110. To connect to the HTTP Server of Tracker Server, you'd connect to port 2111.
Example: http://130.126.50.66:2111/tracker.html
 Connected |
After a few minutes (15-30 minutes), Tracker Server will come by and ask for a special page from the traq directory. If its request is fulfilled, your Newton's lease on life at the tracker will be renewed for one expiration cycle. You'll know this has happened because the status icon of nHTTPd will change from the standard Connected icon to the Tracked icon. |
 Tracked |
No problems reported. Tracker Server can be unstable and kick Newtons off but you won't see that unless you're up ALL the time (you know who you are...)
I am not yet ready to release the Tracker Server to the public. I can arrange to send you a copy if you are willing to participate in development testing (involves a bit of work to keep often buggy builds up and running).