TI Games

I am a Nortel Networks certified instructor. I am giving training on previously known as Bay product. In particular the Bay Router (AN, ASN, ARN and BN) and the Bay Switch (BayStack 450, Accelar 1x00 and 8x00).

Before that I have been a Certified Cisco System Instructor. And for a very long time I have offer the comunity a way to decrypt cisco password with a java applet on my page.

This seems unfair to Nortel, not to have a page talking about them... But currently I have not found any security issue with Nortel Box, or at least not anything I could publish and offer the world. So I choosed to try to write a game for Bay Router, for TI.

TI

TI is the Technician Interface of BayRS router. It is quiet low level, but with the help of a powerfull scripting language and 'Batch' file, it can help you troubleshout your networks. From TI you could do anything possible on the router. Basicaly you have access to the Management Information Base, and from there you can configure the router.

The scripting language

From what I can see and recall, the scripting language looks a lot like TCL and like shell scripting language. You have at your disposal variables (local and global), while loop, if then test, GOTO's, LABEL's, subroutine, printing on the screen, inputing from the user, ... It is also possible to create something similar to array variables.

I see however some limitation in the language... It does not support recursivity or only to limited depth (10 subroutines calls). It does not offer proper scoping of the variables and everything is visible from anywhere in the source file. Using multiple source files does not seems to be practical and usefull (still need to try). And more important, the execution of a script seems to be slow (at least when input/output is used).

Choosing the game

Currently I am still thinkin on the way I will make the game work, but I already made my decision, I will implement Othello/Reversi. The reason for that choice is that very long ago an non-recursive, one level ahead evaluation function was publish for the game. Naturaly it is unlikely that my version will play any strongly, but it could be fast (for a TI script) and give a good opponent to learn about the game and occasional player.

Playing the game

To play the game, you will have to download the script file to a Bay/Nortel Router. You can do this using TFTP, FTP, SiteManage, ... Then you need to log into the router, as User either from the Console/Modem port or within a Telnet session. Finally, you just start the game and choose at each turn where you will play

This is work in progress... come back later please.

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