Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Problem in Ethereal with parsing of VJ-Compressed PPP packets

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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 11:56:32 -0800
Vitaly Kruglikov wrote:

Another observation that I made is that for those packets with "PPP VJ Compression: Compressed data", Ethereal appears to be *over-reporting*
the size of the TCP payload by exactly 2 bytes.

There's nothing in many captures to indicate how many bytes of FCS are being used with PPP; it could be using no FCS, a 2-byte FCS, or a 4-byte FCS. (And even if the initial negotiation to choose an FCS size is in the capture, Ethereal doesn't currently handle it.)

Ethereal defaults to "no FCS"; you'd have to set the "PPP Frame Checksum Type" preference for PPP to "16-bit" to have it dissect the last 2 bytes of a PPP frame as an FCS.

If you do so, the over-reporting goes away - and the TCP checksums are reported as correct again, as those 2 bytes are treated as an FCS rather than as part of the TCP payload.

Also, note that most of the packets coming from the phone (with "PPP VJ Compression: Compressed data" and source=10.120.26.127) should just be ACK or Selective ACK packets, however Ethereal reports all of them as having a 2-byte TCP payload.

That's the same thing - the size of the TCP payload is being over-reported by 2 bytes (i.e., as 2, not 0).