Wireshark-dev: [Wireshark-dev] Displaying interface names in Wireshark

From: Sake Blok <sake@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2007 23:09:00 +0200
Hi,

I'm in the process of adding support for the NetScreen snoop file format.
The basics are already finished (see bug 1717). Right now I'm working
on selecting the right link-layer type for each packet as packets from
different types of interfaces can be in the same file. On top of showing
every packet with the proper WTAP_ENCAP type it would of course be great
to preserve the provided interface-name and the direction of the traffic
as they are present in the dump-file:

6844308.0: adsl1(i) len=86:000800300000->00121ebbd139/8889        
              194.109.5.241 -> 213.84.244.33/41
              vhl=45, tos=00, id=53048, frag=0000, ttl=27 tlen=84
              00 21 45 00 00 54 cf 38 00 00 1b 29 3e 74 c2 6d     .!E..T.8...)>t.m
              05 f1 d5 54 f4 21 60 00 00 00 00 18 3a ff fe 80     ...T.!`.....:...
              00 00 00 00 00 00 02 30 48 ff fe 41 3c 32 fe 80     .......0H..A<2..


I can think of several ways to display the interface name and traffic
direction:

- Make use of a pseudo-header. This can be done fairly easy I think if 
  I look at the code for other fileformats. The downside is that every
  file-format will have it's own pseudo-headers containing the same info.
  This makes it hard to use it as a column (which would be great IMHO).

- Insert extra fields in the frame dissector so that the code for each
  file-format can use these fields and they can be used as columns.

- Make use of PPI (Per Packet Information). I have looked at it a bit and
  I think it could facilitate these two fields, but they have to be
  defined. Also I think this will be the most difficult to implement
  (at least for me). If I understand correctly, this will however 
  also add the possibility to preserve these fields when the file
  is "saved as...".

Are there any oter ideas on how to display interface-names and 
traffic-direction within Wireshark? What would be the prefered way
of creating this functionality?

Cheers,


Sake