Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Network Associates Sniffer timestamps displayed incorrectly

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From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 13:52:14 -0700

On Wednesday, July 2, 2003, at 1:36 PM, Robert Long wrote:

I am using a Network Associates Sniffer with software Distributed Pro
Version 4.20.033.  I am using Ethereal version 0.9.13.

The timestamps are displayed as follows:
On Sniffer software 7/1/03 2:06:23 PM
On Ethereal         7/1/03 13:58:24.-311130

I tried using editcap -F ngwsniffer_2_0 sniffer_file.cap
sniffer_file.pcap
and it changed the time shown in Ethereal to 7/1/03 10:43:53.-357631

Is there any way to convert the timestamps?

The only way to do that would be to:

find out why, in that particular capture, the time stamps are coming out wrong;

fix it in such a way as not to break the interpretation of any *other* Sniffer files.

At least part of the problem appears to be that there is not a simple and correct way to determine the time stamp units in a Windows Sniffer capture (in fact, there are reports that, in at least one case, a Sniffer capture didn't have the right time stamps when read by *Sniffer* on an machine other than the one on which the capture was done; if so, then if even Network Associates can't get it right, the chances that Ethereal can always get it right aren't very good).

We'd have to see the capture file in order to do anything about the problem.