Re: [ethereal-dev] RMON support?

[Gilbert Ramirez <gram@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Aug 05, 1999 at 04:26:20AM -0500, Martin Atkins wrote:
> 
> The idea was to add support in libpcap to capture packets from an RMON 
> probe.
> This would, I believe, add significantly to the capabilities of libpcap, 
> since it would
> enable one to capture packets *at the right place in the network* without 
> having
> to plug the monitoring maching into that place (RMON now being supported by
> most managed network devices).

Yes, we'd like to be able to read traces from RMON agents. I'd probably
put that facility in the wiretap library.
 
> Is there any good reason why none of the packet capture programs (AFAIK) 
> talk to
> the RMON packet capture functions? Perhaps the RMON stuff is only 
> "well-known"
> to SNMP gurus, and not more widely? Although I would have thought that most
> network admins would be interested in both SNMP and packet capture.

No good reason. I used to have access to some smart Token-Ring MAUs
that spoke RMON. I no longer do. :(

The filtering capability of RMON2 is *very* basic compared to BPF,
however. 

--gilbert