Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Adding new conversations to table
From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 12:24:53 -0700
On Sep 8, 2009, at 12:14 PM, Beth wrote:

I'm writing a dissector for a wireless protocol, and would like Wireshark to keep track of conversations between the various endpoints.
The catch seems to be that the sniffer includes several additional  
protocol layers above the wireless protocol, i.e. Ethernet/IP/UDP,  
and the Wireshark conversation table only seems to include those  
protocols in the conversation table.
In my dissector, I have added the usual call to find_conversation  
followed by if (c==NULL) conversation_new(...), but I'm not seeing  
my protocol in the conversation table.  What might I be missing here?
What you're missing is the fact that, unfortunately, Wireshark has no  
general notion of conversations. :-(
I.e., the infrastructure needed to do what you want doesn't exist.  We  
should provide a more general notion of conversations, for a number of  
reasons.
What identifies the endpoints of your protocol's conversations?