Registration of media type for libpcap-format capture files

[Bjoern Hoehrmann]

* 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/>.
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