Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Unexpected behavior of "enable MAC name resolution"

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From: Gilbert Ramirez <gram@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2003 14:07:56 -0000
On Sat, 2003-09-13 at 21:22, Kirk Hobart wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I'm running Ethereal 0.9.15 on Windows 2000 SP2. Ever since 0.9.13,
> Ethereal hasn't been able to resolve machine names on our LAN. I just now
> discovered that by disabling MAC name resolution, 0.9.15 begins resolving
> our LAN names just fine! That's an unexpected interaction. Bug?
> 
> Our LAN uses TCP/IP. I think it uses WINS instead of DNS to resolve local
> machine names, in case that matters.
> 
> Possibly related:  Since 0.9.13, I haven't been able to create display
> filters such as "ip.addr == www.mit.edu". It complains that the name "is
> not a valid hostname or IPv4 address". It accepts only dotted-decimal
> format. I tried various combinations of the name resolution preferences,
> but no joy.
>

I've verified with Ethereal 0.9.15, on Linux, that "ip.addr ==
www.mit.edu" works as a valid display filter. It appears that Ethereal
is unable to resolve "www.mit.edu" on your machine, because if I put an
invalid hostname in the display filter, I get the same error as you.

If you go to a command prompt on your machine and type "ping
www.mit.edu", does it attempt to ping an IP address?

--gilbert