Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] wishlist: md5sum on package

[Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>]

Joel Franco Guzmán wrote:

> It could be cool if there exist a "md5sum" (or some simple hash
> algorithm) in the right click of one packet. It could be a easy way to
> compare a packet to a adjacent packet and see if it is equal or not.
>
> More advanced compare packet system could be nice too, but it could be a
> simple start.

Yes - but would a "Compute MD5 of Packet Data" menu item be rendered 
obsolete by

	1) allowing two packets to be selected in the packet list

and

	2) providing a menu item "Compare Selected Packets"?

If so, how painful would it be to remove "Compute MD5 of Packet Data" if 
we added "Compare Selected Packets"?

Also, how much of the packets should be compared?  The entire packet, 
including the link-layer headers?  (If so, note that we might want to 
reorganize the way we handle 802.11 radio headers in libpcap captures, 
so that they're *not* treated as part of the packet data.  That's a 
significant undertaking, however, so we might not want to wait for that 
before implementing "Compare Selected Packets", even though "Compare 
Selected Packets" wouldn't necessarily work the way you want with such a 
capture.)