Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Using Ethereal with SMC2536W-AG wireless card

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From: "Guy Harris" <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 19:29:22 -0700 (PDT)
Watkins Robert-FRW005 said:
> We installed the SMC2536W-AG on a PC running Windows XP and it found the
> network, etc..., but we cannot decode the 802.11b packets using Ethereal
> version 0.10.4.

What do you mean by "cannot decode"?  In the context of Ethereal, "cannot
decode" means that the packets are captured correctly, but are not
displayed correctly in the packet detail window.  It does *not* mean that
you can't even capture the packets; that's "cannot capture".

> We tried de-selecting the  promiscious mode - but no luck.

Turning off promiscuous mode is a workaround for a "cannot capture" problem:

    http://www.ethereal.com/faq.html#q5.37

It's not a workaround for a "cannot decode" problem.

> Ethereal FAQs state that it may be the vendor's driver which it does not
> support. We contacted SMC but they could not adivse us on this matter.
> Does anybody have any suggestions or could recommend another approach -
> different card, etc. ?

Different operating system?  Windows drivers for wireless cards are
*really* not very helpful to applications that try to capture network
traffic; Linux and BSD drivers do a better job.