[Ns-developers] Request to push tracing changes

[craigdo@ee.washington.edu]

Hi All,

Regarding the never-ending bug 443, I have queued up a new version of the
tracing rework in http://code.nsnam.org/craigdo/ns-3-tracing for your
perusal.  

>From previous list mail, we seemed to agree on a policy:

1) There is a set of suggested trace sources for net devices.

2) Implementing the complete set of suggested trace sources in a net device
is not a requirement.  A device author may pick a subset of these sources to
implement.

3) The net device author should document what trace sources are implemented
and the state the packets are in when they come out of the trace source. For
example, raw IP, Ethernet header, llc/snap, dix, p2p, wifi, etc.

4) A net device author should implement a PromiscSniffer trace source to
allow tcpdump-like functionality in helpers to be called a "standard" net
device; but you are always allowed to do whatever you think is right on your
own time.

In furtherance of this policy I did the following to the tracing code:

1) Removed the objectionable Sniffer (Ethernet framed) and tx complete trace
sources from the wifi device;

2) Removed the unused rx start trace sources from the csma and
point-to-point devices;

3) Removed the non-promiscuous sniffer helper code from the wifi-helper and
left yans-wifi-phy hooked to the promisc sniffer;

4) Added PromiscSniffer (tcpdump) functionality to the various net devices.

5) Changed helpers very slightly to make life a little easier as a result of
the above.

6) Changed the documented examples (second, third) to use promiscuous
sniffers as if someone were doing tcpdump on a real net device

These changes are queued for review/push in http://craigdo/ns-3-tracing

I am asking for permission to push these changes into ns-3-dev, and the
resulting updated (verified) reference traces into ns-3-dev-ref-traces.

This will introduce required documentation changes which I will address
before ns-3.4 is out the door.

Regards,

-- Craig