I Think I've Got It!

I might have finally figured out the packet flow for the most flexibility and utility.

1. Packet arrives on interface
2. Is queued by libpcap
3. Thread grabs packet off of pcap queue
4. IF the packet is NOT the packet we are expecting next (seg.sequence != rcv.nxt)
   1. Throw it into a list used by the thread.
   2. Go back up one level
5. ELSE the packet is one we were expecting
   1. Add the packet to the State Machine's recv() queue, IF there is not already a packet with the same sequence number
   2. IF processing is enabled
      1. Process the packet (i.e. "Segment Arrives" stuff)
      2. Advance the 'processed packet' index, which points to the last packet in the recv() queue that has been processed.
   3. Iterate over all packets in the thread's personal queue. This is done because we might have already received the 'next' packet, but it was received out-of-order.

Okay, so now the packets are being added to a queue, and they are in the correct order. They are also conditionally processed/handled/whatever you want to call it.

Now, we are writing a test. We want to stop when [1] A certain packet is received or [2] A specific state change occurs. This means that two methods need to be hooked into: the state-change method, and the packet-handling method. With the state change, we will want to pass control to the user (i.e. disable auto-processing) AFTER the state transition. With the packet-recv stuff, we want to do it BEFORE the packet is processed. This means that there needs to be a step between '5.1' and '5.2' that checks to see if the packet is flagged, and appropriately disables processing when the packet is encountered.

The test-writer then can call the 'recv()' method and be guaranteed to get the next packet, in the proper order. Additionally, the test-writer can set "break points" that disable auto-processing. This is important, because auto-processing can lead to sending out additional packets (i.e. response to a SYN-ACK, response to a FIN packet, etc.) that may need to be omitted for a test to be successful.

Whew.

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