Re: Registration of media type for libpcap-format capture files

[Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi () gmx net>]

* Phil Vandry wrote:
> We would like to request some clarification concerning the process
> established by RFC 4288 for regstering new types. Sections 3.1 and 5
> state that registrations in the standards tree must either come from
> the IETF itself (in which case they must be published as RFCs) or
> from another "recognized standards body". However, the libpcap
> development community represents neither the IETF nor a recognized
> standards body, to our knowledge. How do you advise that the
> registration be made? Can the IETF sponsor an application that we
> prepare?

My recommendation would be to take what existing specification of the
file format you have, turn that into an Internet-Draft, and have that
published e.g. as Informational RFC. Type registration would then be
a simple matter of including a filled-out RFC 4288 template and note
that in the IANA considerations section. Looking at

  http://wiki.wireshark.org/Development/LibpcapFileFormat

that should be rather simple. You might want to consider using a IANA
registry for the `network` field, but that shouldn't be necessary. The
alternative would be a vendor type registration, it should be perfectly
fine to use, e.g., application/libpcap.pcap, even if there is no par-
ticular "libpcap" vendor behind the format.

For background information on Internet-Draft authoring and publication
see e.g. <http://www.ietf.org/ID.html> and <http://xml.resource.org/>.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern () hoehrmann de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/ 
-
This is the tcpdump-workers list.
Visit https://cod.sandelman.ca/ to unsubscribe.