Using Google Protobuf to Export Full Packet Dissection Data via Named Pipe

[Mark Landriscina <mlandri () verizon net>]

<p style="border: medium none; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.8153px; 
max-width: 700px; font-family: sans-serif;">Apologies in advance if this question is a bit long-ish.</p><p 
style="border: medium none; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.8153px; max-width: 
700px; font-family: sans-serif;">I've been wondering why Wireshark/tshark doesn't offer the option to export full 
packet dissection data via named pipe (serialized binary data). Is this due to design philosophy, lack of offers to 
write the code, or some other reason? Of course, packet dissection data can be written out to stdout or a file in xml 
format. Perhaps this meets most needs?</p><p style="border: medium none; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; 
font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.8153px; max-width: 700px; font-family: sans-serif;">Reason for the question is that I 
needed a dissection data export option that was more efficient than xml. My solution was to modify tshark so it can 
leverage Google Protocol Buffers to export packet dissection data as serialized binary data. Serialized dissection data 
is written out to a named pipe. Protobuf dissect tree creation, serialization, export code is all written in C++ and 
takes advantage of all the optimization work Google has put into its Protobuf library. The client/read side of the pipe 
can be written in any language supported by the Protobuf library. I wrote mine in Python. The client reads and parses 
the serialized dissection data (again) using Google Protobuf lib recreating dissection tree data on client side.</p><p 
style="border: medium none; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.8153px; max-width: 
700px; font-family: sans-serif;">Would it be advantageous to incorporate the above Protobuf approach into the Wireshark 
project or would the community consider it unnecessary or perhaps undesirable?</p><p style="border: medium none; 
margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.8153px; max-width: 700px; font-family: 
sans-serif;">If you're curious about implementation, you can see my project at the following location: <a 
href="https://gitlab.com/MLandriscina/protoShark.git."; style="color: rgb(48, 96, 
168);">https://gitlab.com/MLandriscina/protoShark.git.</a> This is the first time that I've used Protobuf, so I 
wouldn't be surprised to discover that better implementations are possible.</p>

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