Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Only Seeing Outgoing Packets

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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 18:45:33 -0800
Ulf Lamping wrote:

As you mention it, the wiki says: "Note that "dual-speed" hubs that support both 10MBit and 100MBit ports might not send unicast traffic between 10MBit and 100MBit ports; if so, you can only capture traffic between hosts whose Ethernet interfaces are running at the same speed as the Ethernet interface on the machine capturing traffic."

I've expanded that part of the HubReference page to give more detail, describing the scenario I outlined in an earlier message.

The bridge between the two speeds seems to be a (bit of a) switch. I've added your hub to the wiki and mentioned the bridge problems.

I'm assuming there are at least two types of dual-speed hubs - one type with *no* bridge between the speeds, which I assume means that a 10Mb/s host and a 100Mb/s host plugged into the hub can't communicate at all (so there's no traffic between them to capture), and one type with a switch between them (so that broadcast and multicast traffic are passed between the speeds, and unicast traffic is passed to the port to which it's being sent), which I assume means that a 10Mb/s host and a 100Mb/s host plugged into the hub can communicate, but another host plugged into the hub can only see one side of the conversation.

(Are there any dual-speed hubs that pass *all* traffic? I could imagine a lot of 100Mb/s traffic flooding a 10Mb/s port in that case.)