You are absolutely right.
Many protocols are very stateful and it is sometimes just not possible
to dissect the content in paxket x without first collecting some
knowledge from packet x-y .
Example: LSA protocol is not possible to decode until one first has
seen the prior DCERPC BIND command.
Similar dependencies exists for h323 (which i know andreas is familiar
with) and many other protocols as well.
Parallell dissection of packets is theoretically possible but is much
much more difficult than just making all protocol dissectors threads
safe.
On Tue, 5 Apr 2005 08:57:16 +0200, Andreas Sikkema
<andreas.sikkema@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> ethereal-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > The question can be rewritte into: does Ethereal call the dissectors
> > only from one thread at the time or there's a chance (or will be a
> > chance in future versions) that more than one thread will call the
> > dissector function at the same time?
>
> What is the advantage of having multithreaded dissection? Parallel
> processing of subsequent frames is a sure way of introducing
> problems when frame X+1 depends on information from frame X.
>
> Multithreading the rest of the application is another matter of course.
>
> --
> Andreas Sikkema Rits tele.com
> Van Vollenhovenstraat 3 3016 BE Rotterdam
> t: +31 (0)10 2245544 f: +31 (0)10 413 65 45
>
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