Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] XML to describe protocols?

Note: This archive is from the project's previous web site, ethereal.com. This list is no longer active.

From: "Mark H. Wood" <mwood@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 08:51:48 -0500 (EST)
On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Hartmut Mueller wrote:
[snip]
> notation), ITU-T Rec. X.692, ISO/IEC 8825-3. There aren't many protocols by 
> now which are described with ASN.1 (UMTS, GPRS, Bluetooth, BACnet...).

SNMP (sort of), LDAP, Kerberos V, SSL....

> Hopefully, ASN.1 is going to be an important standardisation language for 
> future protocols. That would help a lot for implementation of protocol stacks 
> and Ethereal dissectors because of automatically generated source code 
> directly from the protocol standard. I think that the snmp-dissector is 
> generated that way, isn't it?

W.r.t. open/free software, that would depend on the development of a
general open/free ASN.1 compiler.  And even highly-paid experts working
for hire have had extraordinary difficulty producing general-purpose ASN.1
compilers.

> PS: For information about ASN.1 please have a look at 
> http://asn1.elibel.tm.fr/en/book/ from Olivier Dubuisson. There is also a 
> mailing list at asn1@xxxxxxx.

I'm reading it now.  It's good.  One feels like an apprentice learning the
tricks of the trade at a master's elbow.

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood@xxxxxxxxx
Make a good day.