Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Suggestions for iFCP filtering in Ethereal.

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 This list is no longer active.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: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 10:10:12 -0700
Joshua Oelrich wrote:

iFCP frames can land anywhere in a TCP segment, i.e., it doesn’t have to start at the beginning. There can be more than one iFCP frame in a segment or only a portion of one. This may explain why there are so many frames that are not decoded properly. The decoder needs to scan the TCP segment for iFCP headers. This is not a tough thing to do; generally speaking, I can’t speak for Ethereal decodes. The way it is scanned is to look for the fields in the header and the corresponding 1’s complement fields. The CRC can be used to further check for the proper parsing. Remember there is no one-to-one relationship between iFCP frames and TCP segments. The TCP segments are transporting a byte stream made of arbitrarily positioned iFCP frames.

FCP commands may be sent independently. When an entire segment can’t be filled, data will not be kept waiting and is sent immediately. This may change the positioning of iFCP frames.

Before a proper trace of FCP commands can be obtained, the decode must have the ability to parse iFCP frames from the TCP segments, no matter how many may be in the segment. Part of one, sometimes one, more than one (jumbo frames).

There already appears to be code in the iFCP dissector to handle that. Do you have an example of a capture where that code isn't working?

    *From:* Valappil, Aboo
    *Sent:* Monday, 27 June 2005 8:03 AM
    *To:* Sahlberg, Ronnie; Schorr, Frank; Hinkle, Jack; Martin,
    Kristen; Howard, Nigel; OConnor, Patrick; Covey, Kenneth
    *Cc:* Hawley, Mike (APJK)
    *Subject:* RE: Proprietary FC header - Ethereal helper, please check
    this out.

    We probably do not want to know what is in those 8 bytes, but that
    is confusing ethereal and showing the incorrect fibre channel
    header. I am wondering  if ethereal has got plan to support this
    Cisco EISL header ?

There really aren't any collective plans to support any particular dissection. Some developer, whether they're part of the Ethereal core team or not, might plan to add that support - but they'd probably need some idea how to determine whether that extra header is present to add that support (and some idea of what's in it in order to dissect it as more than just 8 bytes of data).

Subject:
RE: iFCP support for Ethereal
From:
"Mark Detrick" <Mark.Detrick@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date:
Fri, 5 Aug 2005 15:12:34 -0600
To:
"Joshua Oelrich" <Josh.Oelrich@xxxxxxxxxx>, "Raj Rami" <Raj.Rami@xxxxxxxxxx>

To:
"Joshua Oelrich" <Josh.Oelrich@xxxxxxxxxx>, "Raj Rami" <Raj.Rami@xxxxxxxxxx>
CC:
"forum-ips" <forum-ips@xxxxxxxxxx>


Josh,

The decode for iFCP seems to be somewhat incomplete or not working properly. There are too many packets with the status “Unreassembled”. Can you get an explanation from the folks that sent this to you as to why?

Perhaps it's because the TCP preference enabling reassembly of data isn't turned on?