Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Re: [Ethereal-cvs] rev 13827: /trunk/epan/dissectors/: packet-sctp.h

[Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Tuexen wrote:

> If a tap needs port numbers and addresses of a packet should these be
> provided by the data passed to the tap or should the tap code get the
> data from the pinfo variable?

With tunneling, there could be more than one port number or 
network-layer address; the tap should get them from the data passed to 
the tap, so it gets the addresses and port numbers corresponding to the 
tap data in question.

> Another question related to the last commit:
>
> What is a 'conversation'?
> For TCP a conversation seems to be a TCP connection. But what is a 
> conversation
> for SCTP? An SCTP association (=connection) has one port number on each 
> side (like
> TCP) but a list of IP-addresses. So does one SCTP association with n and 
> m addresses
> at each side correspond to one conversation or n*m conversations?

"Conversations" mainly exist for the benefit of protocols running above 
the transport layer, to store per-"session" information and to establish 
per-"session" protocol bindings (the conversation dissector).

If protocols running atop SCTP would want that information to be 
per-association, an conversation in SCTP should correspond to an 
association - that'd require a new type of "conversation".