Once those two parameters are entered, the applet will connect to the remote NeTraMet meter. If it succeeds, it will display the NeTraMet Version number and maximum number of flows in the ``Meter Version'' and ``Status'' fields. If it does not succeed, the message ``No Meter'' will be displayed in the status field. Figure 5.5 shows what the status fields in the applet should look like after succesfully connecting to the meter.
After the connection has been successfully established, the user has to enter the name of the ruleset that was uploaded with NeMaC or nifty. In case of the ruleset shown in Appendix A, the name would be ``2'' (the name appears after the SET keyword in the ruleset file).
Once the name of the ruleset has been typed into the ``ruleset name'' field of the applet and the return key is pressed, the applet tries to find that ruleset in the meters flowRuleSetInfoTable. If it suceeds, it registers itself in the flowReaderInfoTable of the meter as a meter reader that uses this set. The name of the Ruleset owner will then be shown in the ``Ruleset Owner'' field of the status frame.
Thereafter, no more user intervention is necessary. The applet will now try to query the meter in regular intervals to read the flowDataTable. During the queries, the flow identifier of the flow that is currently beeing analysed will be shown in the ``Status'' field. On heavily loaded networks, this process can take a while.
After the whole flow table has been transferred, the applet will display all flows in its table inside the XY-graph. Each flow is represented with either one character or a symbol, depending on the definitions used in the ruleset file. The same syntax as in nifty is used here, so that ruleset files developed for use with nifty can be used without modification. It is even possible to upload a ruleset file only once and display the information with fluid and nifty at the same time.
After some minutes, the applets display area looks like depicted in Figure 5.6. The Y axis depicts the ``active time'', i.e. how long the period was in that packets have been detected for that flow by the meter. On the Y axis, the applet displays the number of PDUs that have been received by the meter for that particular flow. Currently, the number of received and sent PDUs is added before the flow is displayed.
Once no more data for a flow is being received, i.e. the flow is no longer ``current'', the color in which its letter or symbol is being displayed will slowly fade to white. In the current implementation, a flow will be deleted from the display once it has been inactive for more than 1000 seconds.