Michael,
> > Does ethereal support sniffing a gigabit Ethernet link?
> Ethereal uses the OS's drivers and packet capture mechanism
> to do sniffing; in most if not all cases, gigabit Ethernet
> drivers support the same level of sniffing as other Ethernet
> drivers. (Sometimes it's even the same hardware -
> 10/100/1000 Ethernet adapters.)
>
> That doesn't necessarily mean it keeps up with the link, however.
> (Don't ask me for advice on this; others have looked at it in more
> detail.)
In a few days I'm going to get a chance to benchmark a few Gbit cards in
servers running Win2K and Linux. I'll post my results to the list if and
when this happens.
FWIW From my testing so far:
- Ethereal can capture on a loopback address at speeds up to 2.8GBit/s on a
2x1.5GHzP4 IBM Intellistation running Linux.
- Ethereal can capture on 100Mbit/s Ethernet in both directions on crappy
old Pentium II with 64MB RAM without dropping a frame when running Linux.
- I have yet to be able to capture more than 50-60Mbit/s on a Win32 machine
without significant (>10%) packet loss. Ethereal on Win32 can't capture from
the loopback.
Alistair
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