Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] wireless adapter for Ethereal?

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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 09:27:42 -0700
Hua Shengjun wrote:

I come into contact with an issue that my wireless adapter is suitable for AiroPeek but not Ethereal. The vender of adapter is Atheros.

If possible, can you give me info that which outside-wireless-adapters are suitable for Ethereal? Thank!

If you're running Ethereal on Windows, as far as I know, *no* wireless adapter is suitable for "monitor mode" capturing; no vendor's driver supports monitor mode, as far as I know, and the drivers that WildPackets and Network General have do but WildPackets and Network General don't say how to make them do so (and probably don't support using those drivers in other applications, and might even require that you buy the application in order to use the driver).

I don't know whether any of them are suitable for promiscuous mode capturing.

If you're just capturing traffic going to or from the machine running Ethereal, and broadcast/multicast traffic that machine receives, then most adapters *should* work - but don't run in promiscuous mode:

	http://www.ethereal.com/faq#q5.39

	http://www.ethereal.com/faq#q5.40

The WLAN capture setup page on the Ethereal Wiki:

	http://wiki.ethereal.com/CaptureSetup/WLAN

A page that lists various wireless cards and how well they work with WinPcap can be found at

	http://www.micro-logix.com/WinPcap/Supported.asp

If you're lucky enough to be running Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, or OpenBSD, rather than Windows, see the section on the WLAN capture setup page for your OS.