Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Newbie on Ethereal
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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 12:18:11 -0800
On Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 10:21:10AM -0500, Renato Punu wrote: > I have installed winPcap first as well as the etheral ver 0.8.20. Whe I run > etheral and hit capture/start, I can only see the nic card interface on the > INTERFACE field on my machine. Ex. EL90x, USB100TX. > > Questions: > > 1. If I want to capture the live packets coming in/out on Server#1 or > router#1, can I do it on my machine(Win98). Yes, *IF* your machine is on the same network as server#1 or router#1. (You can see some packets coming from those machines if you're on a different network - but the only packets you see will be those that happen to be routed to or through the network your machine is on.) > How can I define/enter the Server#1 or router# interface on the > INTERFACE field. You find out which network the machine is on, and specify whichever interface on your machine is on the same network. I'm not very familiar with Windows OT (95, 98, ME), but, if I remember correctly, it has an "ipconfig" command similar to Windows NT (NT 3.x, NT 4.0, W2K, WXP); try typing "ipconfig /all" in a MS-DOS console window - it might list all the interfaces on your machine, complete with the numbers that I think *might* be what WinPcap uses as names for interfaces. > 2. Is the ethereal program need to be installed/loaded on each machine > that you want to capture live packets. The reason is I can only see the > packets coming in/out on my WIn98 machine when I start capture http://www.ethereal.com/faq.html#q3.4 "Q 3.4: I can't see any TCP packets other than packets to and from my machine, even though another sniffer on the network sees those packets. A: This might be because the network interface on which you're capturing doesn't support "promiscuous" mode, or because your OS can't put the interface into promiscuous mode. Normally, network interfaces supply to the host only: packets sent to one of that host's link-layer addresses; broadcast packets; multicast packets sent to a multicast address that the host has configured the interface to accept. Most network interfaces can also be put in "promiscuous" mode, in which they supply to the host all network packets they see. However, some network interfaces don't support promiscuous mode, and some OSes might not allow interfaces to be put into promiscuous mode. If the interface is not running in promiscuous mode, it won't see any traffic that isn't intended to be seen by your machine. It will see broadcast and perhaps some multicast packets; TCP doesn't use broadcast or multicast, so you will only see your own TCP traffic, but UDP services may use broadcast or multicast so you'll see some UDP traffic - however, this is not a problem with TCP traffic, it's a problem with unicast traffic, as you also won't see all UDP traffic between other machines. This might also be because the interface on which you're capturing is plugged into a switch; on a switched network, unicast traffic between two ports will not necessarily appear on other ports. Some switches have the ability to replicate all traffic on all ports to a single port so that you can plug your sniffer into that single port to sniff all traffic." (It says "TCP packets" in the FAQ because that's how people tend to ask the question; it's not really an issue of TCP vs. UDP, it's an issue of unicast vs. multicast, but they see UDP packets but not TCP packets and conclude, incorrectly, that it's a TCP vs. UDP issue, because they *do* see some UDP packets, even though they're not seeing all the UDP packets on the network.) I'd suggest checking first to make sure you're not on a switched network (if you're plugged into a "hub", make sure it's not a "switching hub", which is really a switch) and, if you're not: check with the vendor of your networking card to see if it supports promiscuous mode; if it does, send a bug report to winpcap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, with full details about the type of networking card, etc., as there might be some problem with WinPcap that keeps it from turning promiscuous mode on. > 3. How can I configure ethereal on my WIn98 so that when I run capture, I > can see the capture packets in real time, not the total % packets, etc. > Right now I can only see the detailed info if I stop capturing the packets. In the "Capture Preferences" dialog box, select "Update list of packets in real time". You might also want to select "Automatic scrolling in live capture", which will make the topmost window, with the list of packets, scroll so that the packets that have most recently arrived are displayed.
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