Thanks for the detailed reply. Is there is list of OSes somewhere,
on which pcap_stat() does report dropped packets properly (or vice versa)?
Dinkar.
-----Original Message-----
From: Guy Harris
To: Dinkar Bhat
Cc: ethereal-users@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 10/23/2003 8:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Ethereal-users] filter and counter
On Oct 23, 2003, at 10:05 AM, Dinkar Bhat wrote:
> Does "Dropped Packets: 0" in the summary window really mean zero
> dropped packets, or is it just that the capture mechanism cannot
> report dropped packets on my OS but shows it as 0?
It means that "pcap_stats()" returned 0 as a count of dropped packets.
On OSes where the capture mechanism can report drops, it really means
zero packets were dropped by the capture mechanism (it says nothing
about cards dropped by the network interface, for example).
On OSes where it can't, it means nothing.
I have a partially-implemented new API for libpcap, in which the
statistics are returned with bitflags indicating which statistics are
being supplied. It allows new statistics to be added *and* allows
statistics *not* to be reported; if I get a chance to finish it in
time, it'll be in a future libpcap release, and will allow platforms
where you can't get a count of dropped packets not to report that
statistic at all, in which case a future release of Ethereal, when
built on a system with that API and running on such a system, wouldn't
say how many packets were dropped. (I have no timeframe for when this
will be done, and can't give one.)
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