I am playing around with the PCAP modules and was happily gathering data on machines on the network. But I was putting them into a HoH, keyed off the Ethernet MAC address. Like this:

$hash{MAC}{IP}
$hash{MAC}{Port}
$hash{MAC}{# of Packets}
etc

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It's not hard to see that this means that I can't see which IPs used which protocols, or how many packets were used for each protocol.

The obvious answer for the example above is: use a HoHoHoH

$hash{MAC}{IP}{Port}{#Packets}

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but there are actually a few more variables involved, such as destination IP by source IP, destination port by source IP, etc . So I might be tempted by a data structure like this:

$hash{MAC}{IP}{Port}{Destination IP}{Port}{#Packets}

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Obviously there are a few problems with this solution, including the fact that I might have to iterate over lots of sub-hashes, and it looks inelegant.

So what would you recommend? Should I maintain half a dozen separate hashes and update each one (possibly via a subroutine)? Should I create an object that will return data when called by methods like $obj->ports_by_ip($ip)?

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

In reply to What data structure should I use to describe networked computers? by jepri

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