[Qt-interest] QtNetwork and raw ethernet properties

[Abdelrazak Younes]

Thiago Macieira wrote:
> On Tuesday 09 December 2008 09:35:18 Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
>   
>>> In any case, changing MAC address is such a rare operation that I doubt
>>> we'd add it.
>>>  
>>>       
>> Well, this kind of things is pretty useful for the telco industry (i.e.
>> big money), maybe you should reconsider ;-)
>>     
>
> I doubt our position will change here.
>
> Like I said, this still pretty rare. Not to mention that all operating systems 
> where Qt is supported think changing the MAC address is a privileged 
> operation.
>   

I was talking about embedded devices in construction, not really about 
changing the MAC address of your ethernet card. This is rightfully 
forbidden, even with root privilege. Forget about it, this was a stupid 
suggestion.

> Not only that, on Linux you need to disable the interface first before 
> changing the address. That's an operation a system administrator should do, 
> manually. Not an application on its own.
>
>   
>>> Setting the TOS bits on TCP packets may be a future feature, since it's
>>> not a privileged operation (setsockopt(2) and IP_TOS). But it's currently
>>> not supported either.
>>>  
>>>       
>> Looking forward to it :-)
>> If I may add a few feature requests:
>> - vlan tagging
>> - checking IP range address (multicast, unicast, IGMP)
>>     
>
> Please send your feature requests to the task tracker, otherwise we'll surely 
> forget them :-)
>   

Will do :-)

> As for IP range checking, what do you mean?

I am taking about IPv4 multicast address range checking:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast_address#IPv4_multicast_addresses

I see now that QNetworkInterface::flags() gives some information, maybe 
that's what I am looking for?

As for IGMP, I guess I am talking about automatic recognition of an IGMP 
packet structure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGMP#IGMPv2_Packet_Structure

IGMP snooping capabilities would be very nice too but this is I guess 
too specialized :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGMP_snooping

>  We currently don't support 
> multicast, but it's a requested feature already. And joining multicast groups 
> requires IGMP.
>   

OK, thanks.

>   
>> - a new QIOdevice subclass able to send raw ethernet data (no TCP nor UDP).
>>     
>
> Another privileged operation.
>   

Yeah, I know but would it be that bad?

Abdel.