Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Frame vs Packet length

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 This list is no longer active.

Date Index Thread Index Other Months All Mailing Lists
Date Prev Date Next Thread Prev Thread Next
From: Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 08:11:10 +0100
Jaap Keuter wrote:

Hi list,

Bug 813 states: "The frame size is properly labeled in the first
line of output. On line 6 of output the frame length is improperly being
labeled as 'Packet Length'. Obviously this is a trivial issue, but since
ethereal tries to be very strict in it's description of a frame, it is
clearly inaccurate to say a packet is the same thing as a frame."

Sounds reasonable, although we might want to keep "frame.pkt_len" around
as an alias for "frame.frm_len".

See also the related issue discussed in
http://www.ethereal.com/lists/ethereal-dev/200212/msg00077.html
There was a discussion some time ago (two years or even more?), if the term frame or packet should be used as both were used throughout the GUI at that time interchangeably. 

The term to use here should be packet as it's the right term.
We didn't changed the frame dissector, as some people noted that this would change a lot of their filter strings. 

So switching from pkt_len to frm_len is probably the wrong way to go.

Regards, ULFL