===============
Getting ICPLD
===============

If you are running FreeBSD, icpld is available through the
porting system.

ICPLD is currently available from 
http://www.ibiblio.org/icpld/icpld-0.5.3.tar.bz2 .
It is also mirrored at http://www.northernmost.org/icpld/

ICPLD might very well also be mirrored at other locations, but for the 
latest official release, stick to one of the two above URLS.

Do you want to mirror ICPLD? Drop me an e-mail.


===========
Thanks to
===========

My wonderful live-in girlfriend for putting up with me constantly 
bringing out LAN connection up and down. 

Jonas Olsson <impcat@fearmuffs.net> for general ideas, testing, lending
me OpenBSD machines as well as writing the startup-script for 
the FreeBSD-port

Alex Boag-Munroe (Jubei) <jubei@chosen-clan.co.uk> for beta testing
and general points of view.

Martin Nilsson <orko@kladdkaka.nu> for help with general ideas (and complaints :-)

===============
What is ICPLD?
===============

ICPLD aka. Internet Connection Performance Logging Daemon (nifty name, huh?)
is a daemon which, by sending ICMP requests to an ip of your 
selection, controls whether your networking connection is up or not. It 
will log any failed attempts to contact the peering
machine, and stamp a log as soon as a reply is received. 
It keeps track of when the connection was unavailable, as well as for how 
long. Both totally down, as well as at each occasion of interrupted connection.

=================
Installing ICPLD 
=================

See INSTALL

====================
Where will it work?
====================

ICPLD is known to build and function properly at the following OS's 
and platforms:

Linux
FreeBSD
NetBSD
OpenBSD
Solaris

And probably most other somewhat normal UNIX like systems. 
You got it running on some alien OS? Contact me, I'd love to know.

================================
How to use ICPLD & How it works
================================

Personally, I wrote this program, due to my ISP. It was under a period 
of time incredible unstable, and didn't perform well at all. So before I 
called them up, I let ICPLD run a few days. Thanks to this information,
rather than "It goes down every now and then, and stays 
down for a while", they could see patterns, and solve the issue rather 
quickly. Well, to the topic; It's recommended to run ICPLD towards a 
host that's aware of this, as constant ICMP requests might be less 
appreciated by some administrators. This is when the -dinterval switch 
comes in handy, as you can use another interval for checking, once 
the connection is down. And when a working connection is 
detected, icpld will fall back to either the default interval, or 
the one specified with -interval. -dinterval should, however, NOT be 
lower than 3 seconds, as the timeout for two ICMP packets is ~3 
seconds. Setting dinterval lower, will spawn a pinging process, faster 
than the old one has been terminated.

The normal way to use ICPLD without the configuration file is as follows:
icpld -ip ip.of.the.target -fbip ip.of.another.target

This will fork icpld to the background, and send an ICMP request every 
10 seconds to ip.of.the.target. If a reply isn't received within an 
appropriate amount of time from either the ip or the fbip, the 
connection is considered broken and a stamp with the time and date is 
put in the log.

The log may be read by executing 
icpld -log
The log file is by default stored in ~/.icpld/log

Another example would be:
icpld -ip 192.168.0.1 -fbip 192.168.0.2 -interval 15 -dinterval 5
Which will check if 192.168.0.1 is available every 15 seconds. 
If it's considered down (it doesn't reply), it will try every 5 seconds. 

It is however recommended to use a configuration file since 
it saves a lot of time on regular usage.

Please note that the log will not be 100% accurate, due to 
timeout time and interval (the lower the interval, the higher accuracy 
you will obtain, as well as higher traffic). It is roughly a few 
seconds differing at each occasion. 

There's several other options available, please 
see 'icpld --help', or 'man icpld'  for further information on these.

==========================================
I have; found a bug, had an idea, a tips,
had enough of you and want to flame you.
==========================================

Feedback is always welcomed by most developers. 
Please see http://northernmost.org/~erik/contact.html before 
sending me any emails what so ever.
Afterwards, feel free to mail me at on of the following addresses;
erik@ibiblio.org  <- Preferred
erik@storuman.nu <- Secondary


However, do NOT contact me if your issue involves any of the following;

1. You are trying to compile ICPLD with an ancient GCC version 
   such as 2.*.* or some weird compiler (except if you've succeeded)
2. An administrator has confronted you for being naughty with constant 
   ICMP requests
3. You haven't even tried to solve the problem yourself
4. If you haven't read this document first.


But please DO contact me if your issue involves any of the following:

1. You want to hire me for a job (anything, programmer 
   (not likely, huh?), bust-boy, driver, etc..)
2. You want to give me your appreciations and/or thanks
3. You got a cool idea that you would like to have implemented 
   in the next version (or preferred, that YOU have implemented)
4. You want to be a beta-tester.
