Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] Gigabit Traffic

From: Stephen Fisher <stephentfisher@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:18:29 -0700
On Wed, Dec 19, 2007 at 12:05:13PM +0800, Halim Wijaya wrote:

> Is Wireshark able to capture Gigabit traffic at full speed without
> dropping any packets?

In theory it is possible if you have a fast enough computer.  I've never
tried it myself, but here are some tips to get Wireshark to run faster:

  http://wiki.wireshark.org/Performance

However, you're probably better off running dumpcap (a command-line
program that comes with Wireshark).  Dumpcap's entire purpose is to
capture packets as fast as possible without interpreting them; in fact,
it's the back-end capture mechanism that Wireshark uses.  Dumpcap lets
you save the traffic to a file and then you can read it in with
Wireshark later.


Steve