Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] VLAN information

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From: Ian Schorr <ethereal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 13:30:56 -0500
Hi Terry,

By "router" I'm assuming you mean "switch (that has routing capabilities)", since I'm not aware of any router that supports SPAN sessions (definitely not any that run mainline IOS).

If you're not seeing any evidence that the VLAN tags are actually *in* the packets that you're looking at, then it's probably not an Ethereal issue per se. Since you're not indicating otherwise, I'm assuming you're capturing using the WinXP PC running Ethereal. I have no idea if you can capture/retain 802.1q tags or 802.1q-tagged frames with Winpcap+Windows+VLAN-aware NIC (or a non-VLAN-aware NIC for that matter), maybe someone else has experience with this.

Otherwise, the tags may just not be handed to your packet capture box. The SPAN session *should* preserve the VLAN tags if they originally existed when arriving at/leaving the port that you're spanning. However, are you sure that the tags are being generated?

Even if you have a port defined as a dot1q trunk, that doesn't necessarily mean that all frames will be tagged. If your environment makes use (intentionally or not) of the "native VLAN" or "default VLAN" concepts, it's very possible that you regularly send frames across "tagging" trunks that are untagged.

Ian

On Nov 3, 2004, at 12:39 PM, tblankenship wrote:

Hi Ian,
The packets I'm seeing look like regular ethernet packets. I am using a
Windows XP based laptop running Ethereal 0.10.7. I'm analyzing a trunk on a Cisco router by using a span session to monitor the defined dot1q trunk. I do
not have a sample capture at this time. Thanks. Terry


------ Original Message ------
Received: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 10:33:43 AM MST
From: Ian Schorr <ethereal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Ethereal user support <ethereal-users@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Ethereal-users] VLAN information

..And you're sure that the router/session controller are using 802.1q
tagging?  How was the capture taken?  It's possible that the tags are
being stripped off before being delivered to the capture device (or
that the capture device is stripping off the tags itself).

If they're actually *in* the frames that were captured and just not
being decoded by Ethereal for some reason, you most likely would see
some evidence that they're there - bytes that aren't being decoded,
entire packets not being decoded correctly, etc.

Can you share an example capture?

Ian

On Nov 3, 2004, at 12:18 PM, tblankenship wrote:

Hi Ian,
I'm not seeing the 802.1q tags being decoded by Ethereal. Terry

------ Original Message ------
Received: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 10:04:06 AM MST
From: Ian Schorr <ethereal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Ethereal user support <ethereal-users@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Ethereal-users] VLAN information

Hi,

Can you give a few more details on what you're looking for?  Are you
looking for technical information on 802.1q tagging?  Or you're not
seeing 802.1q tags being decoded by Ethereal?  Or something else?

Ian

On Nov 3, 2004, at 11:01 AM, tblankenship wrote:

I am running Ethereal 0.10.7 and am having a difficult time seeing
(finding)
any VLAN (dot1q) information.  I am analyzing a link between a Cisco
router
and a session controller.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

tblankenship@xxxxxxx

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