Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] .cap editor

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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 01:30:48 -0800
John Serra wrote:
Microsoft has referred me to you. I am trying to edit a .cap file from netcap.exe that was included in WinXPPro Support Tools. The Microsoft rep said that this was 3rd party software, and refered me to you for a "reader".

Wow, I'm impressed - the .cap format from netcap:

	http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310875

is the native format of *Microsoft's own network analyzer program*, Network Monitor. They didn't recommend *that* to you as a "reader" for their .cap files? Presumably either you're not running Windows (Network Monitor is Windows-only) or you don't have Windows Server (which comes with a version of Network Monitor) or Systems Management Server (which comes with the full version of Network Monitor).

Ethereal also reads Network Monitor .cap files (we reverse-engineered most of it; if Microsoft plans to continue to recommend Ethereal, they might want to give us some more information about capture file formats :-)).

(There are other .cap formats - it's the "obvious" choice for an extension for CAPture files - but they're all different. Fortunately, most if not all of them start with specific "magic numbers", so Ethereal can distinguish between them, and can read at lest some of them.)

Would you direct me to the proper software?

Ethereal can be downloaded from our download pages:

	http://www.ethereal.com/download.html

We build native binaries for Windows and for some UN*Xes; we also distribute full source that can be built on a variety of systems, and link to third-party binaries for other UN*Xes.

It's a reader, not a full-blown "editor" - you can read in a capture, and save selected packets, with Ethereal, but it doesn't support, for example, editing the contents of a packet and writing it out. What sort of editing do you need to do?