VITA49.2 Protocol Integration

[JaRoberts512]

I'm planning on developing a router for VITA49/VITA49.2 packets using this library, so I'm planning to work on adding support for this packet type first. Any help from any other contributors/maintainers would be very welcome.

VITA49.2 Is a network protocol quite commonly used in RF comms and DSP, which uses 3 packet types (data, context, control) to describe an RF signal. It also introduces a master/slave relationship where a device recieving a context/data stream can send back control packets to prompt actions on the sender end. I can provide the full spec, but it's a very large PDF which does not have a public link so please let me know the best way to share.
I'm not planning on a full implementation as there's a lot of work involved, but if anyone is willing to pick up I'll be glad to continue support past my personal use case however I can!

[Dimi1010]

Do you mean this format? Link The link does not appear to have info on the control type tho.

[JaRoberts512]

Yes, this is the format I'm refering to. Haven't seen this doc before though. I've just found out unfortunately I can't attach the full spec as it's an internal document, but I can let you know anything you need in terms of packet strucures, and if you'd like me to write a longer explainer detailing the full packet structures of each type, it'll take some time to put together, but I can do that too, just let me know.

In terms of control packets, context and control packets are mostly the same except control packets can include controller/controllee ID/UUID at the end of the prologue, and the header layout is common accross all types.

[seladb]

@JaRoberts512 if this is an internal documents, can you implement this protocol in an open-source project like PcapPlusPlus?

Do you know if Wireshark supports it? It'd be useful to get some kind of documentation to help reviewing the PR

[JaRoberts512]

@seladb good question, the document can't be released because it was purchased, but they are supposedly open standards, meaning anyone can adopt them and implement them. There are other open source projects that use the standard, such as Vrtgen which is a VITA49.2 packet generator.

Wireshark does support VITA49 out of the box, but not VITA49.2, which adds a lot more features. Geontech, who developed the packet generator also made a wireshark plugin that uses it, which is here.

[seladb]

@JaRoberts512 thanks for the additional info! It'd be great if you can implement this protocol. We'd appreciate any documentation to help us understand how it works. Also please not you should provide pcap files that are required to write tests (even if they're fake or generated by the packet generator)

[JaRoberts512]

Sure, I compiled a .md file with some notes on the protocol but since they contain a decent ammount of text that is very similar to the source document, for obvious reasons, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to publish them in the public domain due to copyright law (so much for 'open standards'...). I'll include some commented notes in the new layer files.

Also yes I will include pcaps, it may need a few examples for the different packet types? We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

[seladb]

Thanks @JaRoberts512 ! If you want you can also send it to pcapplusplus@gmail.com which will help with the PR review