The research project was originally to be mainly the research needed to implement the programming side of my project. As such, it includes the details of different network protocols as well as their history and immediate future. The focus is primarily on TCP/IP. There is also a significant part of my time dedicated to learning Tcl and creating an online for non-programmers using something other than linux as their primary operating system.

A brief history of at least TCP/IP starting from when and why it was formed through how it has evolved and including how it is changing to meet current challenges will probably open the paper. This will include lots of the information I’m researching now about Ipv4 and Ipv6 as well as what machines and types of network topologies this was/is/will be designed for.

The research on protocols has already begun, reading through the textbook on networking and taking notes on the structure of TCP/IP and OSI data packets. I want to be able to give a comprehensive explanation of what makes up each packet of information running across the network, at least on TCP/IP and perhaps on other protocols if it seems useful.

I'm learning Tcl ("tickle") from other people's source code, online sources and from the examples in Building Network Management Tools with Tcl/Tk, which seems to be an excellent book. This is taking longer than expected and so I'm pumping a lot of hours into it.