Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Stream decoders (vs packet decoders)

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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 11:54:23 -0800
Olaf van der Spek wrote:
Can Ethereal also decode streams or do the decoders only work on
individual packets?
More specifically, I'd like to decode a BitTorrent stream.

What's involved in decoding a BitTorrent stream? I.e., what do you want to see Ethereal do? It's strongly oriented towards decoding packets, but a packet needn't correspond to a single link-layer frame; it can reassemble data from multiple link-layer frames into higher-level packets. In the case of an RTP stream, however, it decodes each individual packet separately; it does have a mechanism for saving the entire stream, at least for some audio encodings.