The wanda world is a network of experimental machines of various types which are used for systems research and networking research within the laboratory. Some of these machines are service machines and should not be used for research work. Examples include the Fairisle switches which are used to carry service (i.e. real data) traffic.
When a research machine is reset, it first determines its own identity using a process known as rarping. It reads a unique identifier from some part of its hardware, such as an Ethernet address or a Fairisle Serial Number (FSN) and sends a request over the network, requesting a rarp server to identify it and assign it an msnl identifier. The process of rarping is described in section 4 below.
Having obtained its address, the machine can boot. To do this it loads a kernel from a unix file server. In order for the booting process to work, the machine and the server which supplies the kernel (the boot server) must talk a common protocol, namely the Wanda Booting Protocol, which runs on msnl. A boot client on the booting machine requests the kernel from a boot server running on a unix workstation. This server, and other daemons, are described in section 3.2 below. They must be running in order for the experimental world to operate.
A user of a wanda machine or Fairisle switch may interact with the machine by using either xwcons or xscons. These programs allow the user to observe the console output from the machine or switch. The mechanisms by which the console output are brought to the user are described in section 6 below.