Dumped Communications Bypass
Current version: 0.8 (stable), 0.82 (development)


About Bypass
Download
Development information
Code diary
Contact the authors

The website has now moved in on bypass.sourceforge.net, where it belongs.

About Bypass

Bypass was first written by Krister Emren, Mikael Johansson, Jon Larsson and Pehr Söderman during 10th-31st of January 2000 for the Linux/Open Source Foundation Student Contest. After the completion of the contest (in which Bypass won 3rd prize - Yippie! =), development continues.
Now, in July, did we finally receive the cool T-shirts that were our main reson for participating.
Its original purpose was, besides winning the contest (*grin*), to allow Linux enthusiasts at Danderyd High School in Danderyd, Sweden to continue using their favourite non-HTTP services (eg. FTP, MUD, IRC, etc.) after the school installed a firewall, thus blocking all outbound ports except for 25, 80, 119 and a few others.
With the Bypass Relay Daemon installed and running on port 119 on a computer which was out in the real world (where firewalls only appear in one's nightmares) and the Bypass Daemon on one of the Student Math Club's computers in Danderyd, the way out was opened and there was much rejoicing.
The primary uses of Bypass are: a) to, as above, be able to use services which would otherwise be unavailable when behind a firewall, and b) primitive LAN-to-LAN networking. The latter hasn't actually been tried, but it should work. If you have more ideas on how Bypass could be used, please mail the authors.



Download

There are currently 3 versions available for download.
Bypass 0.8 Binary: The latest stable i386 binary distro. Complete except for the configuration utilities.
Bypass 0.5 Binary: The i386 binary distro submitted for the contest. Incomplete, but what's included works.
Bypass development snapshot: The source as it looks today. Might or might not work. Might or might not include binaries. The binaries, which might be included, might or might not be the ones you'd get from compiling the source. The installation script won't work for this source tree.
Hopefully, we'll be able to provide a nicer development source tree, as well as a binary distro of the development version soon. We might also make it all available with CVS.



Development information

As we won a prize in the contest, we decided that we'd better get version 1.0 ready soon. Below are the "To do"-list and the version history as they appear in the latest development release.

To do:

What's left before 1.0 can be released:
 
Turning off password echoing in bypassrd.
Working hostname resolution (currently only numeric IP works). /* Works (I think) */
A working database engine for the configuration tools.
A console-based configuration tool.
A better installation routine.
Port number on the command line for the server as well.
 
 
This is what we're planning for version 2.0 (or 1.5):
 
Some kind of password encryption.
Improved configuration utilities.
Improved error handling.
Allow specification of alternate config files.
 
 
This is for even later versions:
 
Data compression.
A new, improved client-server protocol.
Inbound connections (ie. running servers behind firewalls).
 
 
This we will definately NOT do:
 
Ports to non-UN*X operating systems.
A graphical user interface (besides the HTML config).
Stop drinking Jolt while coding.

Version history:

All versions before 0.50 are to be interpreted as 0.[date in January, 2000]
0.11: bypassrd compiled.
0.12: bypassrd and bypassd compiled and linked.
0.17: modularisation of code completed.
0.19: bypassrd worked!
0.24: htmlconf UI finished.
0.26: all documentation finished.
0.30: htmlconf database engine finished, but nothing seems to work. :(
0.50: failed to complete project in time for contest, therefore a heavily stripped version without bypassd and config utilities.
0.60: htmlconf database engine no longer segfaults, but does it work?
0.80: bypassd worked!
0.82: the main code is looking better now, plus it TRIES to resolve hostnames ... works fine for /etc/hosts which is all I've tested
0.83: added standalone support and two new cmdline options

We've now added a code diary where Krister and Mikael will post the atrocities they're commiting against that poor, innocent code



Contact the authors

If you have comments, ideas, or anything like that, here's a list of the people currently maintaining Bypass, their e-mail addresses, and what their areas of responsibility/expertise are:




Last modified 00-03-28 by Krister Emren Copyright © 2000 by Dumped Communications 701 hits since 00-02-16