[pcap-ng-format] Comments for unknown blocks [was Re: opsarea presentation?]

[Guy Harris]

On Jul 28, 2014, at 2:35 AM, Michael Tuexen <tuexen at wireshark.org> wrote:

>> This raises in fact another question: it may be useful, in unknown blocks, to reserve some space for something like a company ID, more or less the same way used to define the Ethertype in Ethernet LLC/SNAP (you have to specify the company OUI, which gives you the meaning of the ethertype field).
>> For me, given that we have 32 bits for the block ID, we can reserve 24 for the company OUI, leaving 7 bits for custom-made fields (the last is used to say that this is a private block).
> 
> That requires that the company has an OUI...

And the organization might not be a company.

And an OUI is cheap at, err, umm, 1/100 of the price:

	http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/oui/index.html

"This product was previously referred to as an OUI (Organizationally Unique Identifier) and is still referred to as such in many standards. OUI is an IEEE Registration Authority (RA) specific term that is referred to in various standards and may be used to identify companies on the IEEE Public Listing. A MA-L assignment includes an OUI and the right to generate various extended identifiers based on that OUI. It is most often used to create IEEE 802-defined MAC addresses (EUI-48 and EUI-64)."

And a public MA-L costs USD 2500.  (And that's if you don't want to keep the assignment private; *that* costs an addition USD 2890 *per year*.)

A "company ID", however, is only USD 625 (plus, if you want it kept private, USD 1015 per year):

	http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/cid/index.html

They're not exactly heavily used:

	http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/cid/cid.txt