NFD

Looking at https://gerrit.named-data.net/3790 patchset3 and https://gerrit.named-data.net/3793 patchset4, similar pcap_* function calls are duplicated between EthernetTransport and EthernetChannel. Is there any way to abstract them into an implementation class?

Junxiao Shi wrote:

Looking at https://gerrit.named-data.net/3790 patchset3 and https://gerrit.named-data.net/3793 patchset4, similar pcap_* function calls are duplicated between EthernetTransport and EthernetChannel. Is there any way to abstract them into an implementation class?

https://gerrit.named-data.net/3876 introduces PcapHelper.

There isn't an obvious choice for the level of abstraction. I've decided to keep the PcapHelper class independent of the data-link type (DLT_*). Therefore, the class doesn't know anything about frame structures, ethernet, or any other link-layer protocols. It just wraps a pcap_t handle in a RAII class with a slightly higher-level (more C++-like) interface. Ethernet-specific routines that are reusable can be moved to face/ethernet-protocol.{cpp,hpp}.

Another question is: how can consumers access the raw pcap_t pointer?

1. implicit conversion via operator pcap_t*()
2. overload operator*()
3. member function getHandle()
4. don't provide external access to the raw pcap_t* (this implies that PcapHelper must wrap all libpcap functions that we use)