Subject: Re: Summer of Code: Policy routing / Implement IPv6 ipflow_fastforward
To: Ivo Vachkov <ivo.vachkov@gmail.com>
From: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@dsg.stanford.edu>
List: tech-net
Date: 06/17/2005 16:49:54
In message <f85d6aa70506170325474236a3@mail.gmail.com>Ivo Vachkov writes
>Mr. Stone,

``I didn't spend five years in evil graduate [sic] school to be called "Mr."''
		--Mike Myers 


>With all my respect, I think this is supposed to be one-summer student
>project. [...]

Yes, it is.  Unfortuately, you picked an area where (as I hope I've
already outlined) it's very tricky to pick a subset that is both

	a) doable within the scope of a summer project;

but which also 

	b) yields a result that is useful, or which doesn't
	   simply duplicate existing functionality.

No-one has suggested ``make the network stack SMP-safe'' as a summer
project. It's too big a task, and hard to split up. In its own way,
this particular problem could be a comparable challenge.

If you really want to tackle this project, I urge you to work with a
mentor or advisor with sufficient knowledge about the problem domain
to do a good job of advising; do a good job of setting targets and
milestones; and who can guide you into carving off a piece that's a
suitable size for a summer project, yet of some value to others.

If you don't, you'll have a frustrating summer, at best.