Alex Hopmann's Web Site

Wow, as of today I've been at Pure Networks exactly 6 months. With the release of Network Magic 2.0 coming up really soon I want to start writing some about the platform aspects of the product. Mostly we have somehow managed to really hide this stuff which is a big shame. So as of today I'm going to turn the boat on that. I expect shortly we will be releasing and SDK with neat APIs, some sample code and really sketchy documentation. I'm hoping it will be plenty for developers to see some of the cool stuff you can do with our technology.

To get started I'm going to write a bit about what you can do without any APIs at all. If you have Network Magic running you can look into the path c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Pure Networks\Network Magic\networklib.xml . Note that Application Data is hidden by the Windows Explorer so you might need to type it in manually.

Go ahead and take a look at this file. Its a huge XML file where we persist all the information that we know about all your network devices. This is the stuff that our agents replicate between machines. PLEASE DO NOT WRITE INTO THIS FILE- wait for the APIs to do that.

This file contains a graph of all the devices and other network objects that we know about. The Network Magic app shows a greatly simplified view of this since even showing 10% of this data in the true form would terrify most users. Of course one of the cool things you could experiment with is cool visualizations of this real view of the network or other apps that do cool stuff based on knowing what is on the network.

Let's look quickly at a snip of this data. This is the record for the laptop that I'm typing this on right now-

- <computer id="{314179E4-AD43-4F25-8779-540D43CB5EFA}" localid="{314179E4-AD43-4F25-8779-540D43CB5EFA}">

<existence _tlc="0xb9df3742efe">Confirmed</existence>

<level_of_trust _tlcp="0x64">WeaklyTrusted</level_of_trust>

<subtype _tlc="0xb9df821150b">LaptopComputer</subtype>

<friendly_name _tlc="0xb9df821150b">Alexhop</friendly_name>

<vendorid>NotRecognised</vendorid>

<vendor_sname />

<vendor_name />

<vendor_url />

<vendor_email />

<vendor_phone />

<model_description />

<model_name />

<model_number />

<presentation_url />

- <connections>

</connections>

<mac_address>00:00:00:00:00:00</mac_address>

<hostname _tlc="0xb9df3742f26">Alexhop</hostname>

<ip_address _tlc="0xb9df7799587">192.168.0.103</ip_address>

<ip_subnetmask _tlc="0xb9df4206d85">255.255.255.0</ip_subnetmask>

<nm_flavor _tlc="0xb9df821150b">Pure</nm_flavor>

<nm_distcode _tlc="0xb9df821150b">Pure0</nm_distcode>

<nm_disttype _tlc="0xb9df821150b">OLN</nm_disttype>

<nm_version _tlc="0xb9df821150b">2.0.5276.1-release</nm_version>

- <license_status_list _tlc="0xb9df3fa546e">

<license_status purpose="NetworkMagic" daysleft="22" status="Valid" />

<license_status purpose="WebAccess" daysleft="0" status="Unknown" />

</license_status_list>

<cpu_speed _tlc="0xb9df821150b">1993</cpu_speed>

<cpu_vendorid _tlc="0xb9df821150b">GenuineIntel</cpu_vendorid>

<cpu_name _tlc="0xb9df821150b">Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 2.00GHz</cpu_name>

<cpu_family _tlc="0xb9df821150b">x86</cpu_family>

<osversion_raw _tlc="0xb9df3742efe">5.1.2600</osversion_raw>

<osversion _tlc="0xb9df3742efe">Windows XP</osversion>

<osvariant _tlc="0xb9df821150b">Professional</osvariant>

<comment _tlc="0xb9df821150b">Alexhop</comment>

<domainname _tlc="0xb9df821151f">PureNetworks.com</domainname>

- <dns_entries _tlc="0xb9df7956afa">

<ip_address>192.168.0.1</ip_address>

</dns_entries>

<default_adapter _tlc="0xb9df821151f">{80D0A76C-EFFF-49C3-B071-E156A54BE0D3}</default_adapter>

<phys_memory _tlc="0xb9df821150b">1056964608</phys_memory>

<remote_access_installed>false</remote_access_installed>

<remote_access_running>false</remote_access_running>

- <ra_extension>

- <ra_manager>

<ra_issetup>false</ra_issetup>

<uploads_enabled>true</uploads_enabled>

<enabled>false</enabled>

<intro_headline />

<intro_text />

<login_attempts>0</login_attempts>

<login_attempts_ok>0</login_attempts_ok>

</ra_manager>

</ra_extension>

- <shares _tlc="0xb9df383d402">

- <share id="{D9C6A47B-790C-4E81-9DA7-863CB82A1E2D}" deviceid="{314179E4-AD43-4F25-8779-540D43CB5EFA}">

<type>Document</type>

<status>Online</status>

<name>Builds</name>

<share>Builds</share>

<accesslevel>Restricted</accesslevel>

<count_viewings>0</count_viewings>

<readonly>false</readonly>

<count_files>1</count_files>

<count_folders>0</count_folders>

<total_filesize>19276768</total_filesize>

<thumbnail_filename />

<thumbnail_src_filename />

<disabled>false</disabled>

<flavor>NetworkMagic</flavor>

</share>

</shares>

- <history _tlc="0xb9df383d402">

- <sharechange_operation type="AddedShare" opid="{F1E808C6-62C5-4162-88D1-A5B8117F258F}" opgrpid="{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}">

<time_utc yr="2005" mth="10" dyofwk="3" dy="5" hr="22" min="1" sec="13" msec="986" />

</sharechange_operation>

</history>

</computer>

As you can see, there is a ton of stuff in there. Most of the individual objects are identified by GUIDs and GUIDs are used to refer between them. For example this object has two connections which represent the two network adapters on this laptop (one wired, one wireless). At some point soon I'll post a sample HTML page that will show you a listing of all the shares on your local network.

October 24, 2005

October 19, 2005

October 13, 2005

October 6, 2005

October 5, 2005

October 3, 2005

October 1, 2005