[Oliver_Hall@xxxxxxxx]

Hi All,

Please excuse me if this isn't the correct
forum for my question, but could anyone help me with a problem I have around
Frame/TCP structure.

I have a black-box tool that communicates
with a TCP device, and through looking at the packets of the conversation
I see that the data that makes up the conversation is contained within
the TCP Segment Data of the TCP structure (eth:ip:tcp) i.e. in Ethereal,
it is a child attribute of the TCP section.

I've written a small client to reproduce
the client side of the conversation, but when I look at the traffic structure
in Ethereal of this conversation, the data is *not* in the TCP section,
but shown separately as a Data chunk below the other sections (eth:ip:tcp:data)

I'm not doing anything clever at all
with my client (very simple C socket, only default options, etc.)

Can anyone shed any light on why the
data (very small messages - 3 to 20 bytes) should be written in these different
ways?  And is there anyway (socket option?) to force the client to
include the data within the TCP section.  My eyes might be failing
me, but other than the obvious differences (sequence no.s, checksums, etc.)
the actual bytes of the frames look virtually identical.

The net result is that the device won't
respond to my client - which I expect is a defect in the device's IP implementation...
never the less, I'd really like to be able to communicate with it!

Hope you can help,
Oliver

P.S. I would have posted the IP packets
showing what I mean, but I can get Ethereal to export them as text - sorry!
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