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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Mentioning encapsulation type in Protocol column

From: Lori Jakab <ljakab@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2012 23:33:57 +0100
On 03/13/12 23:07, Martin Kaiser wrote:
> Hi Lori and all,
>
> Thus wrote Lori Jakab (ljakab@xxxxxxxxxx):
>
>> AFAIK, currently the protocol displayed in the Protocol column of
>> Wireshark is that of the last dissector called on the packet. This makes
>> it difficult to distinguish among packets with or without some type of
>> encapsulation, unless filtering is employed. That is, a "regular" ICMP
>> packet and a GRE encapsulated ICMP packet are both simply listed as ICMP.
>> It would be a great feature to be able to see at a glance, when
>> monitoring all traffic (especially with tshark), which packets are GRE
>> or LISP (or any other encapsulating header) encapsulated. So, with the
>> example above, instead of showing just ICMP, the Protocol field would
>> display ICMP/GRE or ICMP/LISP.
>> Is this possible with the current API?
> probably not in the protocol column. Most (if not all) dissectors call
> col_set_str(pinfo->cinfo, COL_PROTOCOL, "my protocol"); and clear the
> previous content.
>
> I just tried defining a custom column as follows
> - select any packet
> - open "Frame" in the tree
> - select "Protocols in Frame"
> - right click, "Apply as column"
>
> That'll give you a colon-separated list of protocols in the column.
> Hopefully, that's what you need.

Thanks Martin, I didn't know about this, and it is certainly helpful,
but a bit too verbose. Ideally I would only like to see the last
protocol (as it is now) + the encapsulation protocol, if there is one.

I take this is not possible right now.

Would it be possible to enable protocols to define themselves as
tunneling/encapsulating protocols, and change the implementation to take
this into account? Wireshark could add its string it after the one set
in the Protocol column, for PDUs found after parsing said protocol type.

Regards,
-Lori