Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] resolving of well-known mac-addresses

[Hannes Gredler <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Aug 29, 2002 at 02:20:56PM -0700, Guy Harris wrote:
| On Thu, Aug 29, 2002 at 11:15:55PM +0200, Hannes Gredler wrote:
| > i scanned the cvs repository and did not find a ethers file that comes
| >   with the standard distribution;
| >   - so the file is not there yet;
| 
| No, but your patch isn't there, either.

b/c it has not yet been committed, i.e. i have working code;
 
| >   - who takes care to set it up / bundle it with the distribution ?
| 
| It's like any other configuration file.  If by "set it up" you mean
| "maintain it", who takes care to maintain *code* to put those entries
| in?

correct ... somebody has to do it collect all the MAC addresses, who will
do it -> you see lack of working code;

| > secondly it would be possibly for a dissector to compute names;
| >   - a good example of this is the cisco HSRP / VRRP protocol:
| >     the MAC addresses [i'll stick with the HSRP example] follows the
| >     convention 00:00:0c:07:ac:<group> so the dissector could
| >     register the name All-HSRP-group-xx-routers for all
| >     256 MAC addresses much more simpler than writing 256 lines
| >     in a file;
| 
| The lines can be written to a file with a program, so that's simple as
| well.
| 
| >   all i am asking is freedom of choice .... and i really can't understand
| >   why this is bad ?
| 
| Why have N mechanisms when one will do?  (I.e., I can't really
| understand why One More Choice is *good* here.)

again, ask the question the other way ... why are more choices *bad* here;
  following real-life logic here ... choice is always good;

given that the patch is trival [6 lines in epan/resolv.{c|h}] there is
no risk that something is getting destabilzed and all parties are
served well;

-the programmer can register the MAC addresses he wants;
-the user can register the MAC addresses he wants using
  joergs idea of adress prefixes in the manuf files
  in a convenient way too;

/hannes