Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 15:16:27 -0500 From: Wesley Eddy <weddy@masaka.cs.ohiou.edu> Subject: Re: libpcap for tcptrace. Message-ID: <20020324151627.B9235@irg.cs.ohiou.edu>
On Sun, Mar 24, 2002 at 01:01:45PM -0600, Hemant Ramnani wrote:
> Hello,
> I am not a networking guy and hence I was wondering
> why do you need to install "libpcap" library for using
> tcptrace, I assumed that tcptrace reads tcpdump files
> and displays the formatted output. Yes, tcpdump utility
> itself needs "libpcap", but then why shud tcptrace need it?
>
Libraries exist so that we don't have to write the same code
twice and so that we only have to get it right once. Libpcap
is used by dozens of network monitoring and analysis programs
as a common framework for reading and writing packets. If
only tcpdump used it, it wouldn't make much sense for it to
be a library, it would just be a part of tcpdump, and other
programs would need to have their own (likely buggy) routines
to read and write data in a tcpdump compatible format. Hope
that clears things up. It's kind of like asking the question,
"My shell uses libc, so why should any of my other programs
need it?" :)
-Wes
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 03/25/02 EST