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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] preference tree for SS7

From: "Luis Ontanon" <luis.ontanon@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:51:20 +0200
On 3/26/07, Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx> wrote:

>
> Hi list,
>
> I finally had a chance to look at the new feature from revision 21066:
>
> http://anonsvn.wireshark.org/viewvc/viewvc.py?view=rev&revision=21066
>
> and see what it looks like if I put, say, all the SS7 dissectors'
> preferences in one preference tree called "SS7".  The result was a
> little startling: I was able to put *21* dissectors' preferences in that
> category:
>
> ALCAP, ANSI BSMAP, ANSI MAP, BSSAP, BSSGP, CAMEL, GSM SMS UD, GSM_MAP,
> INAP, ISUP, isup_thin, IUA, M2PA, M2UA, M3UA, MTP2, MTP3, SCCP, SUA,
> TALI, TCAP
>
> It looks good to me because I tend to think hierarchically and because I
> don't like how long the current list of dissectors with preferences is
> (too much scrolling before I find the one I want).
>
> What does anyone else (especially signaling users) think?  Any objections?
>

There are both reasons for and against it.

I'll agree that the current list is pretty long and I tend to like it to be hierarchical as well.

The drawback is: You'll have to know to search for protocol xy under SS7 (BTW: is this basically the same as http://wiki.wireshark.org/SIGTRAN ?). This might be obvious for frequent protocol user, but makes it probably more complicated for newbies (like me :-).

Whether SIGTRAN belongs to SS7 or just complements it or supersedes it
is a perfect example of an endless categorization discussion.

SIGTRAN is a set of protocols to have SS7 run over IP.

So if we want to group protocols, we should group (at least) most protocols, to have the protocol list length dastically reduced.


Maybe the current Protocol Family overview http://wiki.wireshark.org/ProtocolReference could work as a guideline to sort protocols into such groups.

Regards, ULFL

P.S: Some time ago, I've tried grouping some of the protocols in the menu structure, and immediately got objections from other developers against "my grouping" thoughts - so this discussion might become very controverse ;-)
P.P.S: Will the packet tree context "Protocol Preferences ..." still work with this? This feature is pretty useful!
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