[Ns-developers] review request for ns-3 IPv4 refactoring

[Tom Henderson]

I've been working on some refactoring of the IPv4 layer for a few 
months, and would like to propose it for merging in ns-3.4.  There is 
still some stuff to be done, but I'm fairly satisfied with how it has 
come out and I believe it will be ready for merge by next week, barring 
major comments.

http://code.nsnam.org/tomh/ns-3-ip

Documentation:  I've written various documentation of what this is all 
about in a few places, including a wiki page:
http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/IPv4_cleanup

There are two README files that are reasonably up-to-date in the 
top-level directory:
http://code.nsnam.org/tomh/ns-3-ip/file/4b7ef4adeb60/README.routing.txt
http://code.nsnam.org/tomh/ns-3-ip/file/4b7ef4adeb60/README.routing.api

Regression status:  It has been merged with ns-3-dev and passes "./waf 
--valgrind --regression" except for the following caveats:
1) NSC is not cut over yet, and API needs rescanned for Python
2) simple-point-to-point-olsr fails the regression test but that is 
because I fixed a small bug in the IP stack

The main missing pieces:
1) NSC cut over
2) multicast routing (only scaffolding is there at the moment)
3) python binding regeneration
4) a bit more cleanup and documentation in the ns-3 manual

API changes:  There was considerable API change in IPv4-related classes but:
1) Users of the helper APIs will generally see no changes
2) The porting of any legacy functions should be fairly straightforward

I started to put together a README.routing.api file to document this so 
that it can be used as a basis for CHANGES.html.

I don't think additional IPv6 code will make this release but if this is 
merged, work could restart on merging the rest of the IPv6 code that was 
proposed last year.

- Tom