Jeetendra Singh wrote:
Am not sure whether such a support is there. I did go through the 
mailing list messages but couldn't find definite answers. DAG SS7 card 
doesn't support that for sure.
Libpcap 0.9.3, at least on Linux (and FreeBSD?), for "HDLC" captures, 
supports selecting from Cisco HDLC, PPP, Frame Relay, and MTP2 as 
link-layer types, and Ethereal should be able to read DLT_MTP2 captures. 
   WinPcap also appears to include DAG support, but I don't see 
anything for MTP2.
For Intel's Septel card, if somebody has done 
that, I would really be interested but I don't see it in Ethereal 
distribution?
Remember, I said that much of this belongs in libpcap; check libpcap 
0.9.3.  It captures MTP2 traffic as DLT_MTP2, which Ethereal should be 
able to read.
By proprietary information, (and if I may use the example quoted for SS7 
above), I mean the time slot information, the card information, the port 
number etc. This information is not carried in the frame, so this 
information has to go in a proprietary way
"Proprietary" in what sense?  It doesn't have to be "proprietary" in the 
sense of "secret and undocumented".
If that information is supplied on a per-packet basis, the way it's 
traditionally supplied in libpcap-format capture files is via a 
"pseudo-header"; the packet data would consists of a pseudo-header 
followed by the packet data, with the packet data containg information 
such as the time slot number (in a standard byte order, preferably).
This would require a new libpcap DLT_ value, but they're given out 
fairly freely - just ask tcpdump-workers@xxxxxxxxxxx for one, giving a 
description of the use.
In addition, another requirement can be to allow user to put filters on 
the basis of this proprietary information itself.
If you mean "capture filters", that would be done in libpcap; that can 
be added.
If you mean "display filters", that's up to the dissector.
Lets assume, I would not like to use GUI or a file to get the captured 
and filtered data. I would like to *automate* my analysis of filtered 
data partly because my requirement is to do the analysis in real-time.
That might be done with a tap in Tethereal.  Do a live capture, and run 
with "-q" if you don't want information about individual packets to be 
printed, and have the tap process the information as it receives it.