Ethereal-dev: Re: [ethereal-dev] network object names

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From: Laurent Deniel <deniel@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 19:15:57 +0200
Gilbert Ramirez Jr. wrote:
> 
> Has anyone given any thought to how ethereal might store names for IEEE 802
> hardware addresses? I would like to use a mnemonic for my NIC's hardware
> address.
> 

Yes, I was thinking about it (when I wrote resolv.c)

> We could:
> 

I prefer :

> 1. Use /etc/ethers (a system-wide text file)
&
> 3. Use a per-user text file. 

(e.g. ~/.ethereal/ethers)

> 
> BTW, hardware addresses are not useful just in the layer 2 link
> encapsulation. They are also useful inside the ARP, IPX, and BOOTP modules.

Yes.
  
> And these name functions should be in a library separable from ethereal so
> that they can be used in the library which we hope to replace libpcap with,
> eventually.
 
Why do you want to use them in the library ? Maybe a simple replacement of 
the logical name by the hardware address (at ethereal level) can be done 
(e.g. for filters) ? 
In such a case, according to the length of the system-wide and per-user
files, these names can be stored in another hash table in resolv.c 
(I have to implement tree other functions, one for resolving a logical name,
one for resolving an hardware address and another one for adding an entry in 
the hash table (from the file parsing)).

Laurent.

--
Laurent DENIEL            | E-mail: deniel@xxxxxxxxxxx
Paris, FRANCE             |         deniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                          | WWW   : http://www.worldnet.fr/~deniel
    All above opinions are personal, unless stated otherwise.