Master's degree proposal, Router software

Hello everyone,

After 8 years of being out of school I am trying to start my Masters degree. This specific type of degree is being done only by research (research mode vs. coursework mode). I need to prepare a research proposal and send it to the school. I will need a professor to accept me as a research student.

• I want to end my masters in 1.5 years (at most 2 years)

• I have something arround 1 years of experience in unix programming (BSD Sockets , etc) and very extensive database, J2EE, PHP and .NET experience.

• I am CCNA certified and have done switching and routing courses

With above background I had prepared below proposal:

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A: Study and development of a routing platform (OS) using PC hardware

In this project, a routing operating system based on Intel (or a RISC platform) PCs and hardware will be developed which is able to support a few routing protocols (example: static, rip) on simple interfaces (i.e serial or ethernet).
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Though after a days of searching and thinking I found that it is a very big project. I will need to develop a very stable operating system (memory management, processes, filesystem, ...) and a routing software on top of it and also a user shell.

So I am changing mymind to a smaller project:

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A: Study and development of a routing platform (OS) on top of a unix type operating system

In this project, a routing software on top of a stable unix type OS will be developed which is able to support a few routing protocols (example: static, rip) on ethernet interfaces. Platform will include a user shell. Entire software will be placed on a flash disk to form an appliance.
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Though I will look at already developed software like zebra, I should develop a completely new software.

Now

I need some advice from people here.

1- Is this proposal reasonable?

2- Is it possible to cover all the things in just 1.5 years ?

3- Are you able to suggest me a better research proposal?

4- Any other advice is appereciated.

Regards,
Mac

openwrt, by any chance?

That would be the open source linux for linksys (and well, all the rest too), wireless routers. It's basically just open source replacement software for your router, but you can also solder a serial port to the machine and get a console interface. You can also do some other crazy stuff with it like attach a phone interface cable to the serial port and make the router act like a gateway through the cell phone. You can make it serve files and stuff like that too. Maybe put a card reader on it? Or are you just basically going to do the exact same thing (as openwrt), but on a whole computer? Would you be rewriting all the software that does this already or maybe looking into the hardware aspect like attaching lots and lots of nics in order to get multiple ports? Maybe you want to just show how to implement the pre-existing software? "What's your focus," I guess, is what I'm trying to ask.

Thank you very much for the link and ideas and also your last quetion.

Someone else had also warned me that I should do something new for a research project.

I think I need to find a new and valuable idea around this project which makes it different and then decide on whole project.

Regards,
Mac