Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Capturing on multiple interfaces simultaneously

Note: This archive is from the project's previous web site, ethereal.com. This list is no longer active.

From: Chris Waters <chris.waters@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2002 09:35:36 -0800
Hi,

The core of Ethereal is reenterant so there is no fundamental reason why it
can't be used to capture on multiple interfaces at once. In fact, the next
release of Packetyzer will take advantage of this allow you to capture from
different adapters, in different windows, at the same time. Unfortunately it
looks like the GTK interface has a dependence on some global variables,
however I can't see any reason why you couldn't run two tethereal processes
at the same time and capture from both interfaces. The trick would then be
to merge the captures back together using mergecap.

Regards,

Chris.


----- Original Message -----
From: "McNutt, Justin M." <McNuttJ@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ethereal-users@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 8:36 AM
Subject: [Ethereal-users] Capturing on multiple interfaces simultaneously


> Okay, here's a new twist:
>
> To properly capture on a gigabit fiber connection, one uses a fiber tap,
which slices off some of the optical signal and redirects it.  This means
that you have to tap two physical fibers (RX and TX), each of which must be
connected to the RX connector on a separate NIC.
>
> In other words, it takes two GigE NICs to receive the two halves of a
gigabit fiber tap.
>
> The problem is:  How does one capture on both of these NICs
simultaneously?  Can ethereal do this?  I seem to remember that at one time
it could capture on all interfaces at once, but I don't remember seeing
something that would let it capture on only two or three interfaces in a
machine that has many NICs.
>
> Help?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Justin McNutt
> Network Systems Analyst
> DNPS, Mizzou Telecom
> (573) 882-5183
>
> In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker.
But
> when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like
that.
>         -- Linus Torvalds
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ethereal-users mailing list
> Ethereal-users@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.ethereal.com/mailman/listinfo/ethereal-users
>