Replicated Architecture Application Sharing Use Case – WireShark

Discussing with a colleague, Zelalem, made me think about a possible problem with the use of my solution, using WireShark. WireShark is an integral part of the teaching in the Virtual Classroom where this tool hopefully should be implemented and used.

The problem being, those that may not have used WireShark before, it is a IP packet sniffing tool and captures every packet that passes through the network in the respective collision domain in which the PC is. I in a situation there are two or more systems way apart geographically on different collision domains, how would the display of the packets be handled for the different participants? Imagine, the process and task of having to capture every IP packet is an intensive task both for processing and bandwidth if the information is to be retransmitted for remote view. The major problem I am trying to solve already is the issue of bandwidth.

In a scenario where there are 5 participants in a data conference each running WireShark on their machine (as this is the feature of replicated architecture). In this session one person would be sharing an application and the view should be synchronized with each participant in the session. The software would be capturing live data ever changing respective to the machine on which it runs, how to you get each to show the same captures without having to modify the application WireShark. WireShark would not be able to access the network card of the person sharing the screen in the session. This brings to mind that applications handling live data should be treated differently then applications such as Word Processors. Another application to consider is a Media Player such as audio or video, but this can be handled by other protocols such as video conferencing using MobiCents.

The solution to this I though is to have a feature of still image exchange where the person sharing the application such as WireShark can click a button for the screen shot of the application to be broadcast to the participating participants.

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