Re: [ethereal-dev] Re: [ethereal-users] Ethereal - Displaying IPX Net names and hostnames in capture mode?

["Mark H. Wood" <mwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 8 Nov 1999, Gilbert Ramirez wrote:
[snip]
> I can fix it for MAC addresses, but there's no way to specify the names
> for IPX networks.  We could add support for an /etc/ipxnet file or
> something. There's no standard way of resolving names for IPX, so
> we'll have to make our own.

Dunno about *standard*, but there are ways:

o	If your OS has full IPX support then there should be some way to
	just ask it, because it should be maintaining a route and service
	database.

o	Otherwise you send out a SAP broadcast asking for the nearest
	server.  When something responds, you send it a query and (one
	hopes) it replies with the name.

I doubt that the latter is something that a network monitor should be
doing itself.  To minimize the effects of the Uncertainty Principle, a
passive database maintenance thread should be used to just listen to the
periodic SAP broadcasts.  There may be something already available to do
this on some platforms, and the code could be adapted for others.  Linux
has ipxd, for example, though the manpage is a little unclear (to me) on
just how it does what it does.

A complete solution would also take into account segments that run NLSP
rather than RIP/SAP.  You can still do SAP queries, but the passive
approach has to understand NLSP instead because there will be no SAP
updates broadcast unless an old node has forced the adjacent routers into
compatibility mode.  I don't recall hearing of an OS NLSP implementation
of any sort, but the spec. is available from Novell.  (At least, it *was*;
I just searched their sites and could not find it. )-:

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood@xxxxxxxxx
Please, no more software products offering a "richer experience"!  I have
indigestion of the brain already.  Give me a more ascetic experience.