Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Tree display change

Note: This archive is from the project's previous web site, ethereal.com. This list is no longer active.

From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 01:20:04 -0700
On Wed, Jun 20, 2001 at 08:09:54PM -0400, Joe Tomasone wrote:
> The real problem is the fields below Frame Control
> and above Fixed Parameters (addresses, etc).
> 
> Perhaps we could put them in a nice, neat category and
> make it a top level entry?   Say, "Media Access Control"
> or some derivative?

Well, for one thing, the frame control field is part of the MAC header,
so it'd go into the "Media Access Control" tree as well.

In addition, that's somewhat different from the way other 802.* MAC
layers, and FDDI, are handled; I'd prefer to treat them similarly.

In addition, the 802.11 spec puts the fixed and tagged parameters of
management frames into the "Frame Body" field, just as it puts the LLC
header+payload of data frames into that field, so that makes the
management stuff look like a protocol, so I decided to add a new
protocol and stuff the fixed and tagged parameters under there - so the
dissector works mostly like the 0.8.18 dissector when dissecting the
body of a management frame, except that they're under a top-leven
protocol item rather than being at the top level themselves.

(In doing this, I also yanked the WEP handling code out of separate case
branches for management and data frames, which gets rid of some
duplicate code; if it's possible to have Ethereal dissect the bodies of
those frames if you supply the right keys, we could handle that in
common code as well.)

This is checked into CVS as version 1.36.