> Hey everybody, I am totally new to ethereal. I just ran a random capture last night before I went to bed to see what would > happen. When I got up it had capture almost 250000 packets in 6 hours. Now I was wondering is this normal for a cable
> modem? Or is my computer going crazy sending and receiving packets? I am on a cable modem with winXP.
I assumed each packet was full (1500), and that the traffic was all going in one direction.
250,000 packets * 1500 bytes = 375,000,000 bytes
375,000,000 bytes / 1024 = 366,211 K bytes
366,211 K Bytes / 1024 = 358 MB
If you download few big files you could do 358MB over 6 hours, but if the packets are smaller you wouldn't have to move so much data to reach 250,000 packets. Think about that over time. 250,000 / 6 hours, then divide by 60 minutes, then by 60 seconds.
How many packets per second is it? I calculate 11.57 packets per second.
Assume they are full packets.
1500 bytes * 12 = 18,000 bytes roughly 18K per second
I bet your cable modem can download much faster than that.
So I would say yes, that sounds normal. To learn who was talking during that time you can use the "Conversations" from the menu.
Dig into the contents of the conversations to see what is being transferred.
David DuPre'
Executive Performance Engineering Consultant
HyPerformix Inc.
Office: 706-820-2252
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