Networking/Archive/Necko/Dashboard

The goal for this feature is to provide an in-browser dashboard to monitor network activity, similar to Chrome's <about:net-internals>.

Usage

Install the following add-on: https://github.com/valenting/networking-dashboard/raw/master/networking%40dashboard.xpi

Go to about:networking

Information to Display

Already implemented by Jiten:

• HTTP(Hostname, Port, SPDY, SSL, Active, Idle)
• WebSocket(Hostname, SSL, Msgs Sent, Msgs Received, Data sent, Data received)
• Sockets(Host, Port, Tcp, Active, Idle)
• DNS(Hostname, Family, Adress, Expires)
• Timeline( Total Sent, Total Received

TODO:

• RTT
• Cache status
• Protocol version (1.0 vs 1.1, spdy/2 vs spdy/3 etc..)
• half open connections
• time left before idle expiration for http

Diagnostic Tools

We'd like to have some diagnostic tools built into the dashboard. In prioritized order:

• Can we ping this host? (icmp, tcp, tls levels)
• DNS Lookup
• Failed URL test
• Proxy Settings Test

Tracing/Debugging

• Basic support for events
• Event Listener for capturing events
• Capture events to file
• Add listeners only for certain events -> B2G monitoring

Progress and Ideas

• Implement an event system that allows you to capture the events in the networking stack.
  • Should we use nsIObserver or implement a different model?
  • Networking components should fire events when needed (Data sent, Channel close, etc)
  • Events can be received by 0-many observers
  • Should be very lightweight (many events with minimal data, as well as rare events with lots of data)
    • Pushing events probably means we shouldn't use JSON for the format.
  • Should report AppID (for B2G)

• Does the WebSocket API use the nsSocketTransportService so we can log it?