[ethereal-dev] Standards in decode routines

[Richard Sharpe <sharpe@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

I have insinuated my way onto the team by contributing code and promising
to contribute more :-) At some stage I am going to have to add my name to
the list of contributors on the help screen :-) 

Now I am thinking of more issues.

I am starting to wonder if we have any standards around information
presented by the various decode routines. I am looking for some guidelines,
and don't mind being part of the solution (ie, coming up with guidelines if
they are needed). Are there any guidelines? As I am looking more and more
at TCP level protocols (like SMTP, DNS Zone Transfers, SSH, Telnet, etc),
it may be that there is a need for such guidelines.

Also, here are some observations: I use netmon on an almost daily basis.

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT ETHEREAL

1. It runs under UNIX/Linux

2. In the packet info field, it displays [Syn], [Syn, Ack] etc, rather than
the poxy ...S... and ...S..A etc that netmon displays.

3. For the protocols I care about at the moment, it breaks things out more
completely.

4. We have control over the source, so we can change the things we do not
like.

THINGS ABOUT ETHEREAL I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH

1. It does not presently handle enough protocols. I am contributing towards
fixing this, as are many others.

2. It does not have an ADDRESS/NAME table as far as I can see. There are
many names in other protocols other than DNS names, and NetMon finds them
and places them in an ADDRESS/NAME table. I would like to see support for
this added.

3. At the moment it does not keep any stats, like number of packets in a
trace, number of IP packets, etc.

4. I would like an ability to generate graphs. I have started looking at
drawables in GTK+ and feel that it is possible to produce graphs showing
utilization, window size, etc, but this is a ways off.

5. The GUI needs some improving. We need ways to set defaults so that
ethereal always starts up the way an individual like it. Maybe we need a
.etherealrc file that contains startup instructuons? Who does most of the
GUI work?

Just some random thoughts from my imaginations ...

Regards
-------
Richard Sharpe, sharpe@xxxxxxxxxx, NIC-Handle:RJS96
NS Computer Software and Services P/L, 
Ph: +61-8-8281-0063, FAX: +61-8-8250-2080, 
Samba (Team member), Linux, Apache, Digital UNIX, AIX, C, ...