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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Need advice on modifying tvb

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:11:03 -0800

On Nov 24, 2009, at 11:42 AM, Beth wrote:

I am trying to rewrite an existing dissector for a proprietary protocol that, in fact, is only a slight variation on a standard protocol that is supported by a builtin Wireshark dissector.

The proprietary frame begins with some special fields, followed by a normal frame of the standard protocol BUT the checksum at the end of the normal frame

That sounds a bit like a link-layer protocol; when capturing traffic, sometimes the link-layer FCS is present and sometimes it isn't, so at least some link-layer protocol dissectors have variants that might or might not assume the FCS is there or might check something to determine whether it's there.

If the dissector you're calling is like that, perhaps you can dissect the special fields, hand the normal frame to the "no FCS" version of the dissector, and then dissect (and check) the FCS yourself. If the dissector you're calling isn't like that, perhaps it should be made like that.