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Zaplet, Inc.


In the summer of 2004, Luna Design was hired by IP Fabrics to design and develop an interactive "dashboard" application that would graphically display configuration and activity information from the company's network processor software.

Since the company's software can configure the hardware platform's 16 network processors in varying arrangements, the first challenge was crafting a flexible design that could support all the possible configurations. The completed design also serves as a logical diagram of the platform, which is very helpful in trade show and other demo situations to introduce the company's product.

During the development phase, Luna selected Microsoft's .NET framework and Windows Forms as the implementation platform so the final product could be easily deployed to any PC. To handle communication between the network processor software and the dashboard application, we designed XML messages that could be sent via UDP packets and made the application multi-threaded so the communication layer wouldn't interfere with the frequent updates of the graphical indicators.

Over the course of 2004 and 2005, Luna made several client-requested enhancements including handling advanced configs and supporting a half-sized display mode so several network processors could be watched side-by-side.

Some of the interfaces Luna designed and implemented include:

  • PPL Performance - This panel displays the current platform configuration as a logical diagram. The emphasis is on showing the path packets take through the system and the current performance of the 16 network processors. This panel was later enhanced to support advanced configurations like this sample.

  • PPL Pipeline - This panel focuses on the packet queues for the network processors in the middle of the logical diagram. It gives the viewer a good idea of where packets are getting held up in the system.

Although the dashboard application was originally intended for use at trade shows and customer demos, it has also become a valuable tool for monitoring and debugging the company's software.

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PPL Performance
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PPL Performance
(enhanced for advanced config)
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PPL Pipeline
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