How To Use Wireshark

Wireshark User's Guide
20996 for Wireshark 0.99.5
Ulf Lamping,
Richard Sharpe, NS Computer Software and Services P/L
Ed Warnicke,
Wireshark User's Guide: 20996
for Wireshark 0.99.5

by Ulf Lamping, Richard Sharpe, and Ed Warnicke
Copyright © 2004-2007 Ulf Lamping Richard Sharpe Ed Warnicke
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License,
Version 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
All logos and trademarks in this document are property of their respective owner.
Table of Contents
Preface ............................................................................................................. viii
1. Foreword .............................................................................................. viii
2. Who should read this document? ................................................................. ix
3. Acknowledgements .................................................................................... x
4. About this document ................................................................................. xi
5. Where to get the latest copy of this document? .............................................. xii
6. Providing feedback about this document ..................................................... xiii
1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1
1.1. What is Wireshark? ................................................................................. 1
1.1.1. Some intended purposes ................................................................. 1
1.1.2. Features ...................................................................................... 1
1.1.3. Live capture from many different network media ................................ 2
1.1.4. Import files from many other capture programs .................................. 2
1.1.5. Export files for many other capture programs ..................................... 2
1.1.6. Many protocol decoders ................................................................. 2
1.1.7. Open Source Software ................................................................... 2
1.1.8. What Wireshark is not ................................................................... 3
1.2. System Requirements ............................................................................... 4
1.2.1. General Remarks .......................................................................... 4
1.2.2. Microsoft Windows ....................................................................... 4
1.2.3. Unix / Linux ................................................................................ 5
1.3. Where to get Wireshark? .......................................................................... 6
1.4. A brief history of Wireshark ...................................................................... 7
1.5. Development and maintenance of Wireshark ................................................ 8
1.6. Reporting problems and getting help ........................................................... 9
1.6.1. Website ...................................................................................... 9
1.6.2. Wiki ........................................................................................... 9
1.6.3. FAQ ........................................................................................... 9
1.6.4. Mailing Lists ............................................................................... 9
1.6.5. Reporting Problems ......................................................................10
1.6.6. Reporting Crashes on UNIX/Linux platforms ....................................10
1.6.7. Reporting Crashes on Windows platforms ........................................11
2. Building and Installing Wireshark ........................................................................13
2.1. Introduction ..........................................................................................13
2.2. Obtaining the source and binary distributions ...............................................14
2.3. Before you build Wireshark under UNIX ....................................................15
2.4. Building Wireshark from source under UNIX ..............................................17
2.5. Installing the binaries under UNIX ............................................................18
2.5.1. Installing from rpm's under RedHat and alike ....................................18
2.5.2. Installing from deb's under Debian ..................................................18
2.5.3. Installing from portage under Gentoo Linux ......................................18
2.5.4. Installing from packages under FreeBSD ..........................................18
2.6. Troubleshooting during the install on Unix ..................................................19
2.7. Building from source under Windows ........................................................20
2.8. Installing Wireshark under Windows .........................................................21
2.8.1. Install Wireshark .........................................................................21
2.8.2. Manual WinPcap Installation .........................................................23
2.8.3. Update Wireshark ........................................................................23
2.8.4. Update WinPcap ..........................................................................23
2.8.5. Uninstall Wireshark .....................................................................23
2.8.6. Uninstall WinPcap .......................................................................24
3. User Interface ..................................................................................................26
3.1. Introduction ..........................................................................................26
3.2. Start Wireshark ......................................................................................27
3.3. The Main window ..................................................................................28
3.3.1. Main Window Navigation .............................................................29
3.4. The Menu .............................................................................................30
iv
3.5. The "File" menu .....................................................................................31

3.6. The "Edit" menu ....................................................................................34
3.7. The "View" menu ...................................................................................36
3.8. The "Go" menu ......................................................................................40
3.9. The "Capture" menu ...............................................................................42
3.10. The "Analyze" menu .............................................................................44
3.11. The "Statistics" menu ............................................................................46
3.12. The "Help" menu ..................................................................................48
3.13. The "Main" toolbar ...............................................................................50
3.14. The "Filter" toolbar ...............................................................................53
3.15. The "Packet List" pane ..........................................................................54
3.16. The "Packet Details" pane ......................................................................55
3.17. The "Packet Bytes" pane ........................................................................56
3.18. The Statusbar .......................................................................................57
4. Capturing Live Network Data .............................................................................59
4.1. Introduction ..........................................................................................59
4.2. Prerequisites ..........................................................................................60
4.3. Start Capturing ......................................................................................61
4.4. The "Capture Interfaces" dialog box ...........................................................62
4.5. The "Capture Options" dialog box .............................................................64
4.5.1. Capture frame .............................................................................64
4.5.2. Capture File(s) frame ....................................................................66
4.5.3. Stop Capture... frame ....................................................................66
4.5.4. Display Options frame ..................................................................67
4.5.5. Name Resolution frame ................................................................67
4.5.6. Buttons ......................................................................................67
4.6. Capture files and file modes .....................................................................68
4.7. Link-layer header type ............................................................................70
4.8. Filtering while capturing ..........................................................................71
4.8.1. Automatic Remote Traffic Filtering .................................................72
4.9. While a Capture is running ... ...................................................................74
4.9.1. Stop the running capture ...............................................................74
4.9.2. Restart a running capture ...............................................................75
5. File Input / Output and Printing ...........................................................................77
5.1. Introduction ..........................................................................................77
5.2. Open capture files ..................................................................................78
5.2.1. The "Open Capture File" dialog box ................................................78
5.2.2. Input File Formats ........................................................................80
5.3. Saving captured packets ..........................................................................82
5.3.1. The "Save Capture File As" dialog box ............................................82
5.3.2. Output File Formats .....................................................................84
5.4. Merging capture files ..............................................................................86
5.4.1. The "Merge with Capture File" dialog box ........................................86
5.5. File Sets ...............................................................................................88
5.5.1. The "List Files" dialog box ............................................................88
5.6. Exporting data .......................................................................................90
5.6.1. The "Export as Plain Text File" dialog box .......................................90
5.6.2. The "Export as PostScript File" dialog box .......................................90
5.6.3. The "Export as CSV (Comma Separated Values) File" dialog box .........91
5.6.4. The "Export as PSML File" dialog box ............................................91
5.6.5. The "Export as PDML File" dialog box ............................................92
5.6.6. The "Export selected packet bytes" dialog box ...................................93
5.6.7. The "Export Objects" dialog box .....................................................94
5.7. Printing packets .....................................................................................96
5.7.1. The "Print" dialog box ..................................................................96
5.8. The Packet Range frame ..........................................................................98
5.9. The Packet Format frame .........................................................................99
6. Working with captured packets .......................................................................... 101
6.1. Viewing packets you have captured ......................................................... 101
6.2. Pop-up menus ...................................................................................... 103
6.2.1. Pop-up menu of the "Packet List" pane .......................................... 103
6.2.2. Pop-up menu of the "Packet Details" pane ...................................... 104
6.3. Filtering packets while viewing ............................................................... 108
v
6.4. Building display filter expressions ........................................................... 110

6.4.1. Display filter fields .................................................................... 110
6.4.2. Comparing values ...................................................................... 110
6.4.3. Combining expressions ............................................................... 111
6.4.4. A common mistake .................................................................... 113
6.5. The "Filter Expression" dialog box .......................................................... 114
6.6. Defining and saving filters ..................................................................... 116
6.7. Finding packets .................................................................................... 118
6.7.1. The "Find Packet" dialog box ....................................................... 118
6.7.2. The "Find Next" command .......................................................... 119
6.7.3. The "Find Previous" command ..................................................... 119
6.8. Go to a specific packet .......................................................................... 120
6.8.1. The "Go Back" command ............................................................ 120
6.8.2. The "Go Forward" command ....................................................... 120
6.8.3. The "Go to Packet" dialog box ..................................................... 120
6.8.4. The "Go to Corresponding Packet" command .................................. 120
6.8.5. The "Go to First Packet" command ............................................... 120
6.8.6. The "Go to Last Packet" command ................................................ 120
6.9. Marking packets ................................................................................... 121
6.10. Time display formats and time references ................................................ 122
6.10.1. Packet time referencing ............................................................. 122
7. Advanced Topics ............................................................................................ 125
7.1. Introduction ........................................................................................ 125
7.2. Following TCP streams ......................................................................... 126
7.2.1. The "Follow TCP Stream" dialog box ............................................ 126
7.3. Time Stamps ....................................................................................... 128
7.3.1. Wireshark internals .................................................................... 128
7.3.2. Capture file formats ................................................................... 128
7.3.3. Accuracy .................................................................................. 128
7.4. Time Zones ......................................................................................... 130
7.4.1. Set your computer's time correct! .................................................. 131
7.4.2. Wireshark and Time Zones .......................................................... 131
7.5. Packet Reassembling ............................................................................ 133
7.5.1. What is it? ................................................................................ 133
7.5.2. How Wireshark handles it ........................................................... 133
7.6. Name Resolution .................................................................................. 135
7.6.1. Name Resolution drawbacks ........................................................ 135
7.6.2. Ethernet name resolution (MAC layer) ........................................... 135
7.6.3. IP name resolution (network layer) ................................................ 136
7.6.4. IPX name resolution (network layer) ............................................. 136
7.6.5. TCP/UDP port name resolution (transport layer) .............................. 136
7.7. Checksums ......................................................................................... 137
7.7.1. Wireshark checksum validation .................................................... 137
7.7.2. Checksum offloading .................................................................. 138
8. Statistics ....................................................................................................... 140
8.1. Introduction ........................................................................................ 140
8.2. The "Summary" window ........................................................................ 141
8.3. The "Protocol Hierarchy" window ........................................................... 143
8.4. Endpoints ........................................................................................... 145
8.4.1. What is an Endpoint? .................................................................. 145
8.4.2. The "Endpoints" window ............................................................. 145
8.4.3. The protocol specific "Endpoint List" windows ............................... 146
8.5. Conversations ...................................................................................... 147
8.5.1. What is a Conversation? .............................................................. 147
8.5.2. The "Conversations" window ....................................................... 147
8.5.3. The protocol specific "Conversation List" windows .......................... 147
8.6. The "IO Graphs" window ....................................................................... 148
8.7. Service Response Time ......................................................................... 150
8.7.1. The "Service Response Time DCE-RPC" window ............................ 150
8.8. The protocol specific statistics windows ................................................... 152
9. Customizing Wireshark .................................................................................... 154
9.1. Introduction ........................................................................................ 154
9.2. Start Wireshark from the command line .................................................... 155
vi
9.3. Packet colorization ............................................................................... 160

9.4. Control Protocol dissection .................................................................... 163
9.4.1. The "Enabled Protocols" dialog box .............................................. 163
9.4.2. User Specified Decodes .............................................................. 165
9.4.3. Show User Specified Decodes ...................................................... 166
9.5. Preferences ......................................................................................... 167
9.6. User Table .......................................................................................... 168
9.7. Display Filter Macros ............................................................................ 169
9.8. Tektronics K12xx/15 RF5 protocols Table ................................................ 170
9.9. User DLTs protocol table ....................................................................... 171
9.10. SNMP users Table .............................................................................. 172
A. Files and Folders ............................................................................................ 174
A.1. Capture Files ...................................................................................... 174
A.1.1. Libpcap File Contents ................................................................ 174
A.1.2. Not Saved in the Capture File ...................................................... 174
A.2. Configuration Files and Folders .............................................................. 176
A.3. Windows folders ................................................................................. 180
A.3.1. Windows profiles ...................................................................... 180
A.3.2. Windows NT/2000/XP roaming profiles ........................................ 180
A.3.3. Windows temporary folder ......................................................... 180
B. Protocols and Protocol Fields ........................................................................... 183
C. Wireshark Messages ....................................................................................... 184
C.1. Packet List Messages ............................................................................ 184
C.1.1. [Malformed Packet] ................................................................... 184
C.1.2. [Packet size limited during capture] .............................................. 184
C.2. Packet Details Messages ....................................................................... 185
C.2.1. [Response in frame: 123] ............................................................ 185
C.2.2. [Request in frame: 123] .............................................................. 185
C.2.3. [Time from request: 0.123 seconds] .............................................. 185
D. Related command line tools ............................................................................. 187
D.1. Introduction ........................................................................................ 187
D.2. tshark: Terminal-based Wireshark ......................................................... 188
D.3. tcpdump: Capturing with tcpdump for viewing with Wireshark ................... 189
D.4. dumpcap: Capturing with dumpcap for viewing with Wireshark .................. 190
D.5. capinfos: Print information about capture files .......................................... 191
D.6. editcap: Edit capture files ..................................................................... 192
D.7. mergecap: Merging multiple capture files into one .................................... 195
D.8. text2pcap: Converting ASCII hexdumps to network captures ...................... 198
D.9. idl2wrs: Creating dissectors from CORBA IDL files .................................. 201
D.9.1. What is it? ............................................................................... 201
D.9.2. Why do this? ............................................................................ 201
D.9.3. How to use idl2wrs .................................................................... 201
D.9.4. TODO .................................................................................... 202
D.9.5. Limitations .............................................................................. 203
D.9.6. Notes ...................................................................................... 203
E. This Document's License (GPL) ........................................................................ 205
vii
Preface
1. Foreword
Wireshark is one of those programs that many network managers would love to be able to use, but
they are often prevented from getting what they would like from Wireshark because of the lack of
documentation.
This document is part of an effort by the Wireshark team to improve the usability of Wireshark.
We hope that you find it useful, and look forward to your comments.
viii
Preface
2. Who should read this document?

The intended audience of this book is anyone using Wireshark.
This book will explain all the basics and also some of the advanced features that Wireshark
provides. As Wireshark has become a very complex program since the early days, not every feature
of Wireshark may be explained in this book.
This book is not intended to explain network sniffing in general and it will not provide details about
specific network protocols. A lot of useful information regarding these topics can be found at the
Wireshark Wiki at http://wiki.wireshark.org
By reading this book, you will learn how to install Wireshark, how to use the basic elements of the
graphical user interface (such as the menu) and what's behind some of the advanced features that are
not always obvious at first sight. It will hopefully guide you around some common problems that
frequently appear for new (and sometimes even advanced) users of Wireshark.
ix
Preface
3. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the whole Wireshark team for their assistance. In particular, the au-
thors would like to thank:
• Gerald Combs, for initiating the Wireshark project and funding to do this documentation.
• Guy Harris, for many helpful hints and a great deal of patience in reviewing this document.
• Gilbert Ramirez, for general encouragement and helpful hints along the way.
The authors would also like to thank the following people for their helpful feedback on this docu-
ment:
• Pat Eyler, for his suggestions on improving the example on generating a backtrace.
• Martin Regner, for his various suggestions and corrections.
• Graeme Hewson, for a lot of grammatical corrections.
The authors would like to acknowledge those man page and README authors for the Wireshark
project from who sections of this document borrow heavily:
• Scott Renfro from whose mergecap man page Section D.7, “mergecap: Merging multiple cap-
ture files into one ” is derived.
• Ashok Narayanan from whose text2pcap man page Section D.8, “text2pcap: Converting ASCII
hexdumps to network captures ” is derived.
• Frank Singleton from whose README.idl2wrs Section D.9, “idl2wrs: Creating dissectors
from CORBA IDL files ” is derived.
x
Preface
4. About this document

This book was originally developed by Richard Sharpe with funds provided from the Wireshark
Fund. It was updated by Ed Warnicke and more recently redesigned and updated by Ulf Lamping.
It is written in DocBook/XML.
You will find some specially marked parts in this book:
This is a warning!
You should pay attention to a warning, as otherwise data loss might occur.
This is a note!
A note will point you to common mistakes and things that might not be obvious.
This is a tip!
Tips will be helpful for your everyday work using Wireshark.
xi
Preface
5. Where to get the latest copy of this

document?
The latest copy of this documentation can always be found at: http:/ / www.wireshark.org/ docs/
#usersguide.
xii
Preface
6. Providing feedback about this document

Should you have any feedback about this document, please send them to the authors through wire-
shark-dev[AT]wireshark.org.
xiii
Preface
xiv
Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1. What is Wireshark?
Wireshark is a network packet analyzer. A network packet analyzer will try to capture network
packets and tries to display that packet data as detailed as possible.
You could think of a network packet analyzer as a measuring device used to examine what's going
on inside a network cable, just like a voltmeter is used by an electrician to examine what's going on
inside an electric cable (but at a higher level, of course).
In the past, such tools were either very expensive, proprietary, or both. However, with the advent of
Wireshark, all that has changed.
Wireshark is perhaps one of the best open source packet analyzers available today.
1.1.1. Some intended purposes

Here are some examples people use Wireshark for:
• network administrators use it to troubleshoot network problems
• network security engineers use it to examine security problems
• developers use it to debug protocol implementations
• people use it to learn network protocol internals
Beside these examples, Wireshark can be helpful in many other situations too.
1.1.2. Features
The following are some of the many features Wireshark provides:
• Available for UNIX and Windows.
• Capture live packet data from a network interface.
• Display packets with very detailed protocol information.
• Open and Save packet data captured.
• Import and Export packet data from and to a lot of other capture programs.
• Filter packets on many criteria.
• Search for packets on many criteria.
• Colorize packet display based on filters.
• Create various statistics.
• ... and a lot more!
However, to really appreciate its power, you have to start using it.
Figure 1.1, “ Wireshark captures packets and allows you to examine their content. ” shows Wire-
shark having captured some packets and waiting for you to examine them.
1
Introduction
Figure 1.1. Wireshark captures packets and allows you to examine their
content.
1.1.3. Live capture from many different network media

Wireshark can capture traffic from many different network media types - and despite it's name in-
cluding wireless LAN as well. Which media types are supported, depends on many things like the
operating system you are using. An overview of the supported media types can be found at: http://
wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/NetworkMedia.
1.1.4. Import files from many other capture programs

Wireshark can open packets captured from a large number of other capture programs. For a list of
input formats see Section 5.2.2, “Input File Formats”.
1.1.5. Export files for many other capture programs

Wireshark can save packets captured in a large number of formats of other capture programs. For a
list of output formats see Section 5.3.2, “Output File Formats”.
1.1.6. Many protocol decoders

There are protocol decoders (or dissectors, as they are known in Wireshark) for a great many proto-
cols: see Appendix B, Protocols and Protocol Fields.
1.1.7. Open Source Software
2
Introduction
Wireshark is an open source software project, and is released under the GNU General Public Li-
cence (GPL). You can freely use Wireshark on any number of computers you like, without worrying
about license keys or fees or such. In addition, all source code is freely available under the GPL. Be-
cause of that, it is very easy for people to add new protocols to Wireshark, either as plugins, or built
into the source, and they often do!
1.1.8. What Wireshark is not

Here are some things Wireshark does not provide:
• Wireshark isn't an intrusion detection system. It will not warn you when someone does strange
things on your network that he/she isn't allowed to do. However, if strange things happen, Wire-
shark might help you figure out what is really going on.
• Wireshark will not manipulate things on the network, it will only "measure" things from it.
Wireshark doesn't send packets on the network or do other active things (except for name resolu-
tions, but even that can be disabled).
3
Introduction
1.2. System Requirements

What you'll need to get Wireshark up and running ...
1.2.1. General Remarks
• The values below are the minimum requirements and only "rules of thumb" for use on a moder-
ately used network
• Working with a busy network can easily produce huge memory and disk space usage! For ex-
ample: Capturing on a fully saturated 100MBit/s Ethernet will produce ~ 750MBytes/min! Hav-
ing a fast processor, lots of memory and disk space is a good idea in that case.
• If Wireshark is running out of memory it crashes, see: http:/ / wiki.wireshark.org/ KnownBugs/

OutOfMemory for details and workarounds
• Wireshark won't benefit much from Multiprocessor/Hyperthread systems as time consuming

tasks like filtering packets are single threaded. No rule without exception: during an "Update list
of packets in real time" capture, capturing traffic runs in one process and dissecting and display-
ing packets runs in another process - which should benefit from two processors.
1.2.2. Microsoft Windows
• Windows 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, XP Tablet PC, XP Media Center, Server 2003 or Vista (XP
Pro recommended)
• 32-bit Pentium or alike (recommended: 400MHz or greater), 64-bit processors in WoW64 emu-
lation - see remarks below
• 128MB RAM system memory (recommended: 256MBytes or more)
• 75MB available disk space (plus size of user's capture files, e.g. 100MB extra)
• 800*600 (1280*1024 or higher recommended) resolution with at least 65536 (16bit) colors (256
colors should work if Wireshark is installed with the "legacy GTK1" selection)
• A supported network card for capturing:
• Ethernet: any card supported by Windows should do
• WLAN: see the MicroLogix support list, no capturing of 802.11 headers and non-data
frames
• Other media: See http://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/NetworkMedia
Remarks:
• Older Windows versions are no longer supported because of three reasons: None of the de-
velopers actively use those systems any longer which makes support difficult. The libraries
Wireshark depends on (GTK, WinPCap, ...) also dropping support for these systems. Microsoft
also dropped support for these systems.
• Windows 95, 98 and ME will no longer work with Wireshark. The last known version to work
was Ethereal 0.99.0 (which includes WinPcap 3.1), you still can get it from: http://ethereal.com/
download.html. BTW: Microsoft no longer supports 98/ME since July 11, 2006!
4
Introduction
• Windows NT 4.0 will no longer work with Wireshark. The last known version to work was
Wireshark 0.99.4 (which includes WinPcap 3.1), you still can get it from: http:/ / prdown-
loads.sourceforge.net/wireshark/wireshark-setup-0.99.4.exe. BTW: Microsoft no longer supports
NT 4.0 since December 31, 2005!
• Windows CE and the embedded (NT/XP) versions are not supported!
• 64-bit processors run Wireshark in 32 bit emulation (called WoW64), at least WinPcap 4.0 is re-
quired for that
• Multi monitor setups are supported but may behave a bit strangely
1.2.3. Unix / Linux

Wireshark currently runs on most UNIX platforms. The system requirements should be comparable
to the Windows values listed above.
Binary packages are available for at least the following platforms:
• Apple Mac OS X
• Debian GNU/Linux
• FreeBSD
• Gentoo Linux
• HP-UX
• Mandriva Linux
• NetBSD
• OpenPKG
• Red Hat Fedora/Enterprise Linux
• rPath Linux
• Sun Solaris/i386
• Sun Solaris/Sparc
If a binary package is not available for your platform, you should download the source and try to
build it. Please report your experiences to wireshark-dev[AT]wireshark.org .
5
Introduction
1.3. Where to get Wireshark?

You can get the latest copy of the program from the Wireshark website: ht-
tp://www.wireshark.org/download.html. The website allows you to choose from among several mir-
rors for downloading.
A new Wireshark version will typically become available every 4-8 weeks.
If you want to be notified about new Wireshark releases, you should subscribe to the wireshark-an-
nounce mailing list. You will find more details in Section 1.6.4, “Mailing Lists”.
6
Introduction
1.4. A brief history of Wireshark

In late 1997, Gerald Combs needed a tool for tracking down networking problems and wanted to
learn more about networking, so he started writing Ethereal (the former name of the Wireshark
project) as a way to solve both problems.
Ethereal was initially released, after several pauses in development, in July 1998 as version 0.2.0.
Within days, patches, bug reports, and words of encouragement started arriving, so Ethereal was on
its way to success.
Not long after that, Gilbert Ramirez saw its potential and contributed a low-level dissector to it.
In October, 1998, Guy Harris of Network Appliance was looking for something better than tcpview,
so he started applying patches and contributing dissectors to Ethereal.
In late 1998, Richard Sharpe, who was giving TCP/IP courses, saw its potential on such courses,
and started looking at it to see if it supported the protocols he needed. While it didn't at that point,
new protocols could be easily added. So he started contributing dissectors and contributing patches.
The list of people who have contributed to Ethereal has become very long since then, and almost all
of them started with a protocol that they needed that Ethereal did not already handle. So they copied
an existing dissector and contributed the code back to the team.
In 2006 the project moved house and re-emerged under a new name: Wireshark.
7
Introduction
1.5. Development and maintenance of

Wireshark
Wireshark was initially developed by Gerald Combs. Ongoing development and maintenance of
Wireshark is handled by the Wireshark team, a loose group of individuals who fix bugs and provide
new functionality.
There have also been a large number of people who have contributed protocol dissectors to Wire-
shark, and it is expected that this will continue. You can find a list of the people who have contrib-
uted code to Wireshark by checking the about dialog box of Wireshark, or at the authors page on the
Wireshark web site.
Wireshark is an open source software project, and is released under the GNU General Public Li-
cence (GPL). All source code is freely available under the GPL. You are welcome to modify Wire-
shark to suit your own needs, and it would be appreciated if you contribute your improvements back
to the Wireshark team.
You gain three benefits by contributing your improvements back to the community:
• Other people who find your contributions useful will appreciate them, and you will know that
you have helped people in the same way that the developers of Wireshark have helped people.
• The developers of Wireshark might improve your changes even more, as there's always room for
improvement. Or they may implement some advanced things on top of your code, which can be
useful for yourself too.
• The maintainers and developers of Wireshark will maintain your code as well, fixing it when
API changes or other changes are made, and generally keeping it in tune with what is happening
with Wireshark. So if Wireshark is updated (which is done often), you can get a new Wireshark
version from the website and your changes will already be included without any effort for you.
The Wireshark source code and binary kits for some platforms are all available on the download
page of the Wireshark website: http://www.wireshark.org/download.html.
8
Introduction
1.6. Reporting problems and getting help

If you have problems, or need help with Wireshark, there are several places that may be of interest
to you (well, besides this guide of course).
1.6.1. Website
You will find lots of useful information on the Wireshark homepage at http://www.wireshark.org.
1.6.2. Wiki
The Wireshark Wiki at http://wiki.wireshark.org provides a wide range of information related to
Wireshark and packet capturing in general. You will find a lot of information not part of this user's
guide. For example, there is an explanation how to capture on a switched network, an ongoing effort
to build a protocol reference and a lot more.
And best of all, if you would like to contribute your knowledge on a specific topic (maybe a net-
work protocol you know well), you can edit the wiki pages by simply using your web browser.
1.6.3. FAQ
The "Frequently Asked Questions" will list often asked questions and the corresponding answers.
Read the FAQ!

Before sending any mail to the mailing lists below, be sure to read the FAQ, as it will
often answer the question(s) you might have. This will save yourself and others a lot of
time (keep in mind that a lot of people are subscribed to the mailing lists).
You will find the FAQ inside Wireshark by clicking the menu item Help/Contents and selecting the
FAQ page in the upcoming dialog.
An online version is available at the Wireshark website: http://www.wireshark.org/faq.html. You

might prefer this online version, as it's typically more up to date and the HTML format is easier to
use.
1.6.4. Mailing Lists

There are several mailing lists of specific Wireshark topics available:
wireshark-announce This mailing list will inform you about new program releases, which
usually appear about every 4-8 weeks.
wireshark-users This list is for users of Wireshark. People post questions about build-
ing and using Wireshark, others (hopefully) provide answers.
wireshark-dev This list is for Wireshark developers. If you want to start developing a
protocol dissector, join this list.
You can subscribe to each of these lists from the Wireshark web site: http://www.wireshark.org.
Simply select the mailing lists link on the left hand side of the site. The lists are archived at the
Wireshark web site as well.
Tip!
You can search in the list archives to see if someone asked the same question some
time before and maybe already got an answer. That way you don't have to wait until
someone answers your question.
9
Introduction
1.6.5. Reporting Problems

Note!
Before reporting any problems, please make sure you have installed the latest version
of Wireshark.
When reporting problems with Wireshark, it is helpful if you supply the following information:
1. The version number of Wireshark and the dependent libraries linked with it, eg GTK+, etc.
You can obtain this with the command wireshark -v.
2. Information about the platform you run Wireshark on.
3. A detailed description of your problem.
4. If you get an error/warning message, copy the text of that message (and also a few lines before
and after it, if there are some), so others may find the place where things go wrong. Please don't
give something like: "I get a warning while doing x" as this won't give a good idea where to
look at.
Don't send large files!

Do not send large files (>100KB) to the mailing lists, just place a note that further data
is available on request. Large files will only annoy a lot of people on the list who are
not interested in your specific problem. If required, you will be asked for further data
by the persons who really can help you.
Don't send confidential information!

If you send captured data to the mailing lists, be sure they don't contain any sensitive
or confidential information like passwords or such.
1.6.6. Reporting Crashes on UNIX/Linux platforms

When reporting crashes with Wireshark, it is helpful if you supply the traceback information
(besides the information mentioned in "Reporting Problems").
You can obtain this traceback information with the following commands:
$ gdb `whereis wireshark | cut -f2 -d: | cut -d' ' -f2` core >& bt.txt
backtrace
^D
$
Note
Type the characters in the first line verbatim! Those are back-tics there!
Note
backtrace is a gdb command. You should enter it verbatim after the first line shown
above, but it will not be echoed. The ^D (Control-D, that is, press the Control key and
10
Introduction
the D key together) will cause gdb to exit. This will leave you with a file called
bt.txt in the current directory. Include the file with your bug report.
Note
If you do not have gdb available, you will have to check out your operating system's
debugger.
You should mail the traceback to the wireshark-dev[AT]wireshark.org mailing list.
1.6.7. Reporting Crashes on Windows platforms

The Windows distributions don't contain the symbol files (.pdb), because they are very large. For
this reason it's not possible to create a meaningful backtrace file from it. You should report your
crash just like other problems, using the mechanism described above.
11
Introduction
12
Chapter 2. Building and Installing
Wireshark
2.1. Introduction
As with all things, there must be a beginning, and so it is with Wireshark. To use Wireshark, you
must:
• Obtain a binary package for your operating system, or
• Obtain the source and build Wireshark for your operating system.
Currently, only two or three Linux distributions ship Wireshark, and they are commonly shipping an
out-of-date version. No other versions of UNIX ship Wireshark so far, and Microsoft does not ship
it with any version of Windows. For that reason, you will need to know where to get the latest ver-
sion of Wireshark and how to install it.
This chapter shows you how to obtain source and binary packages, and how to build Wireshark
from source, should you choose to do so.
The following are the general steps you would use:
1. Download the relevant package for your needs, e.g. source or binary distribution.
2. Build the source into a binary, if you have downloaded the source.
This may involve building and/or installing other necessary packages.
3. Install the binaries into their final destinations.
13
Building and Installing Wireshark
2.2. Obtaining the source and binary

distributions
You can obtain both source and binary distributions from the Wireshark web site: ht-
tp://www.wireshark.org. Simply select the download link, and then select either the source package
or binary package of your choice from the mirror site closest to you.
Download all required files!

In general, unless you have already downloaded Wireshark before, you will most
likely need to download several source packages if you are building Wireshark from
source. This is covered in more detail below.
Once you have downloaded the relevant files, you can go on to the next step.
Note!
While you will find a number of binary packages available on the Wireshark web site,
you might not find one for your platform, and they often tend to be several versions
behind the current released version, as they are contributed by people who have the
platforms they are built for.
For this reason, you might want to pull down the source distribution and build it, as the
process is relatively simple.
14
2.3. Before you build Wireshark under UNIX

Before you build Wireshark from sources, or install a binary package, you must ensure that you
have the following other packages installed:
• GTK+, The GIMP Tool Kit.
You will also need Glib. Both can be obtained from www.gtk.org
• libpcap, the packet capture software that Wireshark uses.
You can obtain libpcap from www.tcpdump.org
Depending on your system, you may be able to install these from binaries, e.g. RPMs, or you may
need to obtain them in source code form and build them.
If you have downloaded the source for GTK+, the instructions shown in Example 2.1, “Building
GTK+ from source” may provide some help in building it:
Example 2.1. Building GTK+ from source
gzip -dc gtk+-1.2.10.tar.gz | tar xvf -

<much output removed>
cd gtk+-1.2.10
./configure
make
make install
Note!
You may need to change the version number of gtk+ in Example 2.1, “Building GTK+
from source” to match the version of GTK+ you have downloaded. The directory you
change to will change if the version of GTK+ changes, and in all cases, tar xvf - will
show you the name of the directory you should change to.
Note!
If you use Linux, or have GNU tar installed, you can use tar zxvf gtk+-1.2.10.tar.gz.
It is also possible to use gunzip -c or gzcat rather than gzip -dc on many UNIX sys-
tems.
Note!
If you downloaded gtk+ or any other tar file using Windows, you may find your file
called gtk+-1_2_8_tar.gz.
You should consult the GTK+ web site if any errors occur in carrying out the instructions in Ex-
ample 2.1, “Building GTK+ from source”.
If you have downloaded the source to libpcap, the general instructions shown in Example 2.2,
“Building and installing libpcap” will assist in building it. Also, if your operating system does not
support tcpdump, you might also want to download it from the tcpdump web site and install it.
15
Example 2.2. Building and installing libpcap
gzip -dc libpcap-0.9.4.tar.Z | tar xvf -

cd libpcap-0.9.4
./configure
make
make install
Note!
The directory you should change to will depend on the version of libpcap you have
downloaded. In all cases, tar xvf - will show you the name of the directory that has
been unpacked.
Under RedHat 6.x and beyond (and distributions based on it, like Mandrake) you can simply install
each of the packages you need from RPMs. Most Linux systems will install GTK+ and GLib in any
case, however, you will probably need to install the devel versions of each of these packages. The
commands shown in Example 2.3, “ Installing required RPMs under RedHat Linux 6.2 and beyond
” will install all the needed RPMs if they are not already installed.
Example 2.3. Installing required RPMs under RedHat Linux 6.2 and beyond
cd /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS
rpm -ivh glib-1.2.6-3.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh glib-devel-1.2.6-3.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh gtk+-1.2.6-7.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh gtk+-devel-1.2.6-7.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh libpcap-0.4-19.i386.rpm
Note
If you are using a version of RedHat later than 6.2, the required RPMs have most
likely changed. Simply use the correct RPMs from your distribution.
Under Debian you can install Wireshark using apt-get. apt-get will handle any dependency issues
for you. Example 2.4, “Installing debs under Debian” shows how to do this.
Example 2.4. Installing debs under Debian
apt-get install wireshark-dev
16
2.4. Building Wireshark from source under

UNIX
Use the following general steps if you are building Wireshark from source under a UNIX operating
system:
1. Unpack the source from its gzip'd tar file. If you are using Linux, or your version of UNIX
uses GNU tar, you can use the following command:
tar zxvf wireshark-0.99.5-tar.gz
For other versions of UNIX, You will want to use the following commands:
gzip -d wireshark-0.99.5-tar.gz
tar xvf wireshark-0.99.5-tar
Note!
The pipeline gzip -dc wireshark-0.99.5-tar.gz | tar xvf - will work here as well.
Note!
If you have downloaded the Wireshark tarball under Windows, you may find that
your browser has created a file with underscores rather than periods in its file
name.
2. Change directory to the Wireshark source directory.
3. Configure your source so it will build correctly for your version of UNIX. You can do this with
the following command:
./configure
If this step fails, you will have to rectify the problems and rerun configure. Troubleshooting
hints are provided in Section 2.6, “Troubleshooting during the install on Unix”.
4. Build the sources into a binary, with the make command. For example:
make
5. Install the software in its final destination, using the command:
make install
Once you have installed Wireshark with make install above, you should be able to run it by enter-
ing wireshark.
17
2.5. Installing the binaries under UNIX

In general, installing the binary under your version of UNIX will be specific to the installation meth-
ods used with your version of UNIX. For example, under AIX, you would use smit to install the
Wireshark binary package, while under Tru64 UNIX (formerly Digital UNIX) you would use setld.
2.5.1. Installing from rpm's under RedHat and alike

Use the following command to install the Wireshark RPM that you have downloaded from the
Wireshark web site:
rpm -ivh wireshark-0.99.5.i386.rpm
If the above step fails because of missing dependencies, install the dependencies first, and then retry
the step above. See Example 2.3, “ Installing required RPMs under RedHat Linux 6.2 and beyond ”
for information on what RPMs you will need to have installed.
2.5.2. Installing from deb's under Debian

Use the following command to install Wireshark under Debian:
apt-get install wireshark
apt-get should take care of all of the dependency issues for you.
2.5.3. Installing from portage under Gentoo Linux

Use the following command to install Wireshark under Gentoo Linux with all of the extra features:
USE="adns gtk ipv6 portaudio snmp ssl kerberos threads selinux" emerge wireshark
2.5.4. Installing from packages under FreeBSD

Use the following command to install Wireshark under FreeBSD:
pkg_add -r wireshark
pkg_add should take care of all of the dependency issues for you.
18
2.6. Troubleshooting during the install on

Unix
A number of errors can occur during the installation process. Some hints on solving these are
provided here.
If the configure stage fails, you will need to find out why. You can check the file config.log in
the source directory to find out what failed. The last few lines of this file should help in determining
the problem.
The standard problems are that you do not have GTK+ on your system, or you do not have a recent
enough version of GTK+. The configure will also fail if you do not have libpcap (at least the re-
quired include files) on your system.
Another common problem is for the final compile and link stage to terminate with a complaint of:
Output too long. This is likely to be caused by an antiquated sed (such as the one shipped with Sol-
aris). Since sed is used by the libtool script to construct the final link command, this leads to mys-
terious problems. This can be resolved by downloading a recent version of sed from http://direct-
ory.fsf.org/GNU/sed.html.
If you cannot determine what the problems are, send mail to the wireshark-dev mailing list explain-
ing your problem, and including the output from config.log and anything else you think is rel-
evant, like a trace of the make stage.
19
2.7. Building from source under Windows

It is recommended to use the binary installer for Windows, until you want to start developing Wire-
shark on the Windows platform.
For further information how to build Wireshark for Windows from the sources, have a look at the
Development Wiki: http://wiki.wireshark.org/Development for the latest available development
documentation.
20
2.8. Installing Wireshark under Windows

In this section we explore installing Wireshark under Windows from the binary packages.
2.8.1. Install Wireshark

You may acquire a binary installer of Wireshark named something like: wireshark-
setup-x.y.z.exe. The Wireshark installer includes WinPcap, so you don't need to download
and install two separate packages.
Simply download the Wireshark installer from: http://www.wireshark.org/download.html#releases

and execute it. Beside the usual installer options like where to install the program, there are several
optional components.
Tip: Just keep the defaults!

If you are unsure which settings to select, just keep the defaults.
2.8.1.1. "Choose Components" page

Wireshark (both Wireshark GTK1 and 2 user interfaces cannot be installed at the same time):
• Wireshark GTK1 - Wireshark is a GUI network protocol analyzer.
• Wireshark GTK2 - Wireshark is a GUI network protocol analyzer (using the modern GTK2
GUI toolkit, recommended).
• GTK-Wimp - GTKWimp is the GTK2 windows impersonator (native Win32 look and feel, re-
commended).
TShark - TShark is a command-line based network protocol analyzer.
You may try the GTK1 selection if you experience any GUI problems with GTK2, e.g. Windows
with only 256 (8bit) color displays won't work well with GTK2. However, the older GTK1 user in-
terface doesn't provide some advanced analyze and statistics features.
Plugins / Extensions (for the Wireshark and TShark dissection engines):
• Dissector Plugins - Plugins with some extended dissections.
• Tree Statistics Plugins - Plugins with some extended statistics.
• Mate - Meta Analysis and Tracing Engine (experimental) - user configurable extension(s) of
the display filter engine, see http://wiki.wireshark.org/Mate for details.
• SNMP MIBs - SNMP MIBs for a more detailed SNMP dissection.
Tools (additional commnand line tools to work with capture files):
• Editcap - Editcap is a program that reads a capture file and writes some or all of the packets into
another capture file.
• Text2Pcap - Text2pcap is a program that reads in an ASCII hex dump and writes the data into a
libpcap-style capture file.
• Mergecap - Mergecap is a program that combines multiple saved capture files into a single out-
put file.
21
• Capinfos - Capinfos is a program that provides information on capture files.
User's Guide - Local installation of the User's Guide. The Help buttons on most dialogs will require
an internet connection to show help pages if the User's Guide is not installed locally.
2.8.1.2. "Additional Tasks" page
• Start Menu Shortcuts - add some start menu shortcuts.
• Desktop Icon - add a Wireshark icon to the desktop.
• Quick Launch Icon - add a Wireshark icon to the Explorer quick launch toolbar.
• Associate file extensions to Wireshark - Associate standard network trace files to Wireshark.
2.8.1.3. "Install WinPcap?" page

The Wireshark installer contains the latest released WinPcap installer.
If you don't have WinPcap installed, you won't be able to capture live network traffic, but you will
still be able to open saved capture files.
• Currently installed WinPcap version - the Wireshark installer detects the currently installed
WinPcap version.
• Install WinPcap x.x - if the currently installed version is older than the one coming with the
Wireshark installer (or WinPcap is not installed at all), this will be selected by default.
• Start WinPcap service "NPF" at startup - so users without administrative privileges can cap-
ture.
More WinPcap info:
• Wireshark related: http://wiki.wireshark.org/WinPcap
• General WinPcap info: http://www.winpcap.org
2.8.1.4. Command line options

You can simply start the Wireshark installer without any command line parameters, it will show you
the usual interactive installer.
For special cases, there are some command line parameters available:
• /NCRC disables the CRC check
• /S runs the installer or uninstaller silently with default values. Please note: The silent installer
won't install WinPCap!
• /desktopicon installation of the desktop icon, =yes - force installation, =no - don't install, other-
wise use defaults / user settings. This option can be useful for a silent installer.
• /quicklaunchicon installation of the quick launch icon, =yes - force installation, =no - don't in-
22
stall, otherwise use defaults / user settings.
• /D sets the default installation directory ($INSTDIR), overriding InstallDir and InstallDir-
RegKey. It must be the last parameter used in the command line and must not contain any
quotes, even if the path contains spaces.
Example:
wireshark-setup-0.99.5.exe /NCRC /S /desktopicon=yes

/quicklaunchicon=no /D=C:\Program Files\Foo
2.8.2. Manual WinPcap Installation

Note!
As mentioned above, the Wireshark installer takes care of the installation of Win-
Pcap, so usually you don't have to worry about WinPcap at all!
The following is only necessary if you want to try a different version than the one included in the
Wireshark installer, e.g. because a new WinPcap (beta) version was released.
Additional WinPcap versions (including newer alpha or beta releases) can be downloaded from the
following locations:
• The main WinPcap site: http://www.winpcap.org
• The Wiretapped.net mirror: http://www.mirrors.wiretapped.net/security/packet-capture/winpcap
At the download page you will find a single installer exe called something like "auto-installer",
which can be installed under various Windows systems, including NT4.0/2000/XP/Vista.
2.8.3. Update Wireshark

From time to time you may want to update your installed Wireshark to a more recent version. If you
join Wireshark's announce mailing list, you will be informed about new Wireshark versions, see
Section 1.6.4, “Mailing Lists” for details how to subscribe to this list.
New versions of Wireshark usually become available every 8-12 weeks. Updating Wireshark is
done the same way as installing it, you simply download and start the installer exe. A reboot is usu-
ally not required and all your personal settings remain unchanged.
2.8.4. Update WinPcap

New versions of WinPcap are less frequently available, maybe only once in a year. You will find
WinPcap update instructions where you can download new WinPcap versions. Usually you have to
reboot the machine after installing a new WinPcap version.
Warning!
If you have an older version of WinPcap installed, you must un-install it before in-
stalling the current version. Recent versions of the WinPcap installer will take care of
this.
2.8.5. Uninstall Wireshark

23
You can uninstall Wireshark the usual way, using the "Add or Remove Programs" option inside the
Control Panel. Select the "Wireshark" entry to start the uninstallation procedure.
The Wireshark uninstaller will provide several options which things to be uninstalled, the default is
to remove the core components but keep the personal settings, WinPcap and alike.
WinPcap won't be uninstalled by default, as other programs than Wireshark may use it as well.
2.8.6. Uninstall WinPcap

You can uninstall WinPcap independently of Wireshark, using the "WinPcap" entry in the "Add or
Remove Programs" of the Control Panel.
Note!
After uninstallation of WinPcap you can't capture anything with Wireshark.
It might be a good idea to reboot Windows afterwards.
24
25
Chapter 3. User Interface
3.1. Introduction
By now you have installed Wireshark and are most likely keen to get started capturing your first
packets. In the next chapters we will explore:
• How the Wireshark user interface works
• How to capture packets in Wireshark
• How to view packets in Wireshark
• How to filter packets in Wireshark
• ... and many other things!
26
User Interface
3.2. Start Wireshark

You can start Wireshark from your shell or window manager.
Tip!
When starting Wireshark it's possible to specify optional settings using the command
line. See Section 9.2, “Start Wireshark from the command line” for details.
Note!
In the following chapters, a lot of screenshots from Wireshark will be shown. As Wire-
shark runs on many different platforms and there are different versions of the underly-
ing GUI toolkit (GTK 1.x / 2.x) used, your screen might look different from the
provided screenshots. But as there are no real differences in functionality, these
screenshots should still be well understandable.
27
User Interface
3.3. The Main window

Lets look at Wireshark's user interface. Figure 3.1, “The Main window” shows Wireshark as you
would usually see it after some packets captured or loaded (how to do this will be described later).
Figure 3.1. The Main window
Wireshark's main window consist of parts that are commonly known from many other GUI pro-
grams.
1. The menu (see Section 3.4, “The Menu”) is used to start actions.
2. The main toolbar (see Section 3.13, “The "Main" toolbar”) provides quick access to frequently
used items from the menu.
3. The filter toolbar (see Section 3.14, “The "Filter" toolbar”) provides a way to directly manipu-
late the currently used display filter (see Section 6.3, “Filtering packets while viewing”).
4. The packet list pane (see Section 3.15, “The "Packet List" pane”) displays a summary of each
packet captured. By clicking on packets in this pane you control what is displayed in the other
two panes.
5. The packet details pane (see Section 3.16, “The "Packet Details" pane”) displays the packet se-
lected in the packet list pane in more detail.
6. The packet bytes pane (see Section 3.17, “The "Packet Bytes" pane”) displays the data from the
packet selected in the packet list pane, and highlights the field selected in the packet details
pane.
28
User Interface
7. The statusbar (see Section 3.18, “The Statusbar”) shows some detailed information about the
current program state and the captured data.
Tip!
The layout of the main window can be customized by changing preference settings.
See Section 9.5, “Preferences” for details!
3.3.1. Main Window Navigation

Packet list and detail navigation can be done entirely from the keyboard. Table 3.1, “Keyboard Nav-
igation” shows a list of keystrokes that will let you quickly move around a capture file. See Ta-
ble 3.5, “Go menu items” for additional navigation keystrokes.
Table 3.1. Keyboard Navigation

Accelerator Description
Tab, Shift+Tab
Move between screen elements, e.g. from the toolbars to the packet list to the
packet detail.
Down
Move to the next packet or detail item.
Up
Move to the previous packet or detail item.
Ctrl-Down, F8
Move to the next packet, even if the packet list isn't focused.
Ctrl-Up, F7
Move to the previous packet, even if the packet list isn't focused.
Left
In the packet detail, closes the selected tree item. If it's already closed, jumps to
the parent node.
Right
In the packet detail, opens the selected tree item.
Backspace
In the packet detail, jumps to the parent node.
Return, Enter
In the packet detail, toggles the selected tree item.
Additionally, typing anywhere in the main window will start filling in a display filter.
29
User Interface
3.4. The Menu

The Wireshark menu sits on top of the Wireshark window. An example is shown in Figure 3.2, “The
Menu”.
Note!
Menu items will be greyed out if the corresponding feature isn't available. For ex-
ample, you cannot save a capture file if you didn't capture or load any data before.
Figure 3.2. The Menu
It contains the following items:
File This menu contains items to open and merge capture files, save / print / export
capture files in whole or in part, and to quit from Wireshark. See Section 3.5, “The
"File" menu”.
Edit This menu contains items to find a packet, time reference or mark one or more
packets, set your preferences, (cut, copy, and paste are not presently implemented).
See Section 3.6, “The "Edit" menu”.
View This menu controls the display of the captured data, including the colorization of
packets, zooming the font, show a packet in a separate window, expand and col-
lapse trees in packet details, .... See Section 3.7, “The "View" menu”.
Go This menu contains items to go to a specific packet. See Section 3.8, “The "Go"
menu”.
Capture This menu allows you to start and stop captures and to edit capture filters. See Sec-
tion 3.9, “The "Capture" menu”.
Analyze This menu contains items to manipulate display filters, enable or disable the dis-
section of protocols, configure user specified decodes and follow a TCP stream.
See Section 3.10, “The "Analyze" menu”.
Statistics This menu contains menu-items to display various statistic windows, including a
summary of the packets that have been captured, display protocol hierarchy statist-
ics and much more. See Section 3.11, “The "Statistics" menu”.
Help This menu contains items to help the user, like access to some basic help, a list of
the supported protocols, manual pages, online access to some of the webpages, and
the usual about dialog. See Section 3.12, “The "Help" menu”.
Each of these menu items is described in more detail in the sections that follow.
Tip!
You can access menu items directly or by pressing the corresponding accelerator keys,
which are shown at the right side of the menu. For example, you can press the Control
(or Strg in German) and the K keys together to open the capture dialog.
30
User Interface
3.5. The "File" menu

The Wireshark file menu contains the fields shown in Table 3.2, “File menu items”.
Figure 3.3. The "File" Menu
Table 3.2. File menu items

Menu Item Accelerator Description
Open... Ctrl+O
This menu item brings up the file open dialog box that allows
you to load a capture file for viewing. It is discussed in more
detail in Section 5.2.1, “The "Open Capture File" dialog
box”.
Open Recent
This menu item shows a submenu containing the recently
opened capture files. Clicking on one of the submenu items
will open the corresponding capture file directly.
Merge...
This menu item brings up the merge file dialog box that al-
lows you to merge a capture file into the currently loaded
one. It is discussed in more detail in Section 5.4, “Merging
capture files”.
Close Ctrl+W
This menu item closes the current capture. If you haven't
saved the capture, you will be asked to do so first (this can be
disabled by a preference setting).
31
User Interface

------
Save Ctrl+S
This menu item saves the current capture. If you have not set
a default capture file name (perhaps with the -w <capfile>
option), Wireshark pops up the Save Capture File As dialog
box (which is discussed further in Section 5.3.1, “The "Save
Capture File As" dialog box”).
Note!
If you have already saved the current capture,
this menu item will be greyed out.
Note!
You cannot save a live capture while it is in
progress. You must stop the capture in order to
save.
Save As... Shift+Ctrl+S

This menu item allows you to save the current capture file to
whatever file you would like. It pops up the Save Capture
File As dialog box (which is discussed further in Sec-
tion 5.3.1, “The "Save Capture File As" dialog box”).
------
File Set > List
Files This menu item allows you to show a list of files in a file set.
It pops up the Wireshark List File Set dialog box (which is
discussed further in Section 5.5, “File Sets”).
File Set > Next
File If the currently loaded file is part of a file set, jump to the
next file in the set. If it isn't part of a file set or just the last
file in that set, this item is greyed out.
File Set > Pre-
vious File If the currently loaded file is part of a file set, jump to the
previous file in the set. If it isn't part of a file set or just the
first file in that set, this item is greyed out.
------
Export > as
"Plain Text" This menu item allows you to export all, or some, of the
file... packets in the capture file to a plain ASCII text file. It pops
up the Wireshark Export dialog box (which is discussed fur-
ther in Section 5.6.1, “The "Export as Plain Text File" dialog
box”).
Export > as
"PostScript" This menu item allows you to export the (or some) of the
file... packets in the capture file to a PostScript file. It pops up the
Wireshark Export dialog box (which is discussed further in
Section 5.6.2, “The "Export as PostScript File" dialog box”).
Export > as
"CSV" This menu item allows you to export the (or some) of the
(Comma Sep- packet summaries in the capture file to a .csv file (e.g. used
arated Values by spreadsheet programs). It pops up the Wireshark Export
packet sum- dialog box (which is discussed further in Section 5.6.3, “The
mary) file... "Export as CSV (Comma Separated Values) File" dialog
box”).
32
User Interface

Export > as
"PSML" file... This menu item allows you to export the (or some) of the
packets in the capture file to a PSML (packet summary
markup language) XML file. It pops up the Wireshark Export
dialog box (which is discussed further in Section 5.6.4, “The
"Export as PSML File" dialog box”).
Export > as
"PDML" file... This menu item allows you to export the (or some) of the
packets in the capture file to a PDML (packet details markup
language) XML file. It pops up the Wireshark Export dialog
box (which is discussed further in Section 5.6.5, “The "Ex-
port as PDML File" dialog box”).
Export > Selec- Ctrl+H
ted Packet This menu item allows you to export the currently selected
Bytes... bytes in the packet bytes pane to a binary file. It pops up the
Wireshark Export dialog box (which is discussed further in
Section 5.6.6, “The "Export selected packet bytes" dialog
box”)
------
Print... Ctrl+P
This menu item allows you to print all (or some of) the pack-
ets in the capture file. It pops up the Wireshark Print dialog
box (which is discussed further in Section 5.7, “Printing
packets”).
------
Quit Ctrl+Q
This menu item allows you to quit from Wireshark. Wire-
shark will ask to save your capture file if you haven't saved it
before (this can be disabled by a preference setting).
33
User Interface
3.6. The "Edit" menu

The Wireshark Edit menu contains the fields shown in Table 3.3, “Edit menu items”.
Figure 3.4. The "Edit" Menu
Table 3.3. Edit menu items

Find Packet... Ctrl+F
This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you to find
a packet by many criteria. There is further information on
finding packets in Section 6.7, “Finding packets”.
Find Next Ctrl+N
This menu item tries to find the next packet matching the set-
tings from "Find Packet...".
Find Previous Ctrl+B
This menu item tries to find the previous packet matching the
settings from "Find Packet...".
------
Mark Packet Ctrl+M
(toggle) This menu item "marks" the currently selected packet. See
Section 6.9, “Marking packets” for details.
Find Next Shift+Ctrl+N
Mark Find the next marked packet.
34
User Interface

Find Previous Shift+Ctrl+B
Mark Find the previous marked packet.
Mark All Pack-
ets This menu item "marks" all packets.
Unmark All
Packets This menu item "unmarks" all marked packets.
------
Set Time Refer- Ctrl+T
ence (toggle) This menu item set a time reference on the currently selected
packet. See Section 6.10.1, “Packet time referencing” for
more information about the time referenced packets.
Find Next Ref-
erence This menu item tries to find the next time referenced packet.
Find Previous
Reference This menu item tries to find the previous time referenced
packet.
------
Preferences... Shift+Ctrl+P
This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you to set
preferences for many parameters that control Wireshark. You
can also save your preferences so Wireshark will use them
the next time you start it. More detail is provided in Sec-
tion 9.5, “Preferences”.
35
User Interface
3.7. The "View" menu

The Wireshark View menu contains the fields shown in Table 3.4, “View menu items”.
Figure 3.5. The "View" Menu
Table 3.4. View menu items

Main Toolbar
This menu item hides or shows the main toolbar, see Sec-
tion 3.13, “The "Main" toolbar”.
Filter Toolbar
This menu item hides or shows the filter toolbar, see Sec-
tion 3.14, “The "Filter" toolbar”.
Statusbar
This menu item hides or shows the statusbar, see Sec-
tion 3.18, “The Statusbar”.
------
Packet List
This menu item hides or shows the packet list pane, see Sec-
tion 3.15, “The "Packet List" pane”.
Packet Details
This menu item hides or shows the packet details pane, see
Section 3.16, “The "Packet Details" pane”.
36
User Interface

Packet Bytes
This menu item hides or shows the packet bytes pane, see
Section 3.17, “The "Packet Bytes" pane”.
------
Time Display
Format > Date Selecting this tells Wireshark to display the time stamps in
and Time of date and time of day format, see Section 6.10, “Time display
Day: formats and time references”.
1970-01-01
01:02:03.12345 Note!
6
The fields "Time of Day", "Date and Time of
Day", "Seconds Since Beginning of Capture"
and "Seconds Since Previous Packet" are mutu-
ally exclusive.
Time Display
Format > Time Selecting this tells Wireshark to display time stamps in time
of Day: of day format, see Section 6.10, “Time display formats and
01:02:03.12345 time references”.
6
Time Display
Format > Selecting this tells Wireshark to display time stamps in
Seconds Since seconds since beginning of capture format, see Section 6.10,
Beginning of “Time display formats and time references”.
Capture:
123.123456
Time Display
Format > Selecting this tells Wireshark to display time stamps in
Seconds Since seconds since previous packet format, see Section 6.10,
Previous Pack- “Time display formats and time references”.
et: 1.123456
Time Display
Format > ------
Time Display
Format > Auto- Selecting this tells Wireshark to display time stamps with the
matic (File precision given by the capture file format used, see Sec-
Format Preci- tion 6.10, “Time display formats and time references”.
sion)
Note!
The fields "Automatic", "Seconds" and
"...seconds" are mutually exclusive.
Time Display
Format > Selecting this tells Wireshark to display time stamps with a
Seconds: 0 precision of one second, see Section 6.10, “Time display
formats and time references”.
Time Display
Format > Selecting this tells Wireshark to display time stamps with a
...seconds: 0.... precision of one second, decisecond, centisecond, milli-
second, microsecond or nanosecond, see Section 6.10, “Time
display formats and time references”.
Name Resolu-
tion > Resolve This item allows you to trigger a name resolve of the current
Name packet only, see Section 7.6, “Name Resolution”.
Name Resolu-
This item allows you to control whether or not Wireshark
37
User Interface

tion > Enable
for MAC Layer translates MAC addresses into names, see Section 7.6,
“Name Resolution”.
Name Resolu-
tion > Enable This item allows you to control whether or not Wireshark
for Network translates network addresses into names, see Section 7.6,
Layer “Name Resolution”.
Name Resolu-
tion > Enable This item allows you to control whether or not Wireshark
for Transport translates transport addresses into names, see Section 7.6,
Layer “Name Resolution”.
Colorize Packet
List This item allows you to control whether or not Wireshark
should colorize the packet list.
Note!
Enabling colorization will slow down the dis-
play of new packets while capturing / loading
capture files.
Auto Scroll in
Live Capture This item allows you to specify that Wireshark should scroll
the packet list pane as new packets come in, so you are al-
ways looking at the last packet. If you do not specify this,
Wireshark simply adds new packets onto the end of the list,
but does not scroll the packet list pane.
------
Zoom In Ctrl++
Zoom into the packet data (increase the font size).
Zoom Out Ctrl+-
Zoom out of the packet data (decrease the font size).
Normal Size Ctrl+=
Set zoom level back to 100% (set font size back to normal).
Resize All
Columns Resize all column widths so the content will fit into it.
Note!
Resizing may take a significant amount of time,
especially if a large capture file is loaded.
------
Expand Sub-
trees This menu item expands the currently selected subtree in the
packet details tree.
Expand All
Wireshark keeps a list of all the protocol subtrees that are ex-
panded, and uses it to ensure that the correct subtrees are ex-
panded when you display a packet. This menu item expands
all subtrees in all packets in the capture.
Collapse All
This menu item collapses the tree view of all packets in the
capture list.
------
38
User Interface

Coloring
Rules... This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you to col-
or packets in the packet list pane according to filter expres-
sions you choose. It can be very useful for spotting certain
types of packets, see Section 9.3, “Packet colorization”.
------
Show Packet in
New Window This menu item brings up the selected packet in a separate
window. The separate window shows only the tree view and
byte view panes.
Reload Ctrl-R
This menu item allows you to reload the current capture file.
39
User Interface
3.8. The "Go" menu

The Wireshark Go menu contains the fields shown in Table 3.5, “Go menu items”.
Figure 3.6. The "Go" Menu
Table 3.5. Go menu items

Back Alt+Left
Jump to the recently visited packet in the packet history,
much like the page history in a web browser.
Forward Alt+Right
Jump to the next visited packet in the packet history, much
like the page history in a web browser.
Go to Packet... Ctrl-G
Bring up a dialog box that allows you to specify a packet
number, and then goes to that packet. See Section 6.8, “Go to
a specific packet” for details.
Go to Corres-
ponding Packet Go to the corresponding packet of the currently selected pro-
tocol field. If the selected field doesn't correspond to a pack-
et, this item is greyed out.
------
Previous Pack- Ctrl+Up
et Move to the previous packet in the list. This can be used to
40
User Interface
move to the previous packet even if the packet list doesn't

have keyboard focus.
Next Packet Ctrl+Down
Move to the next packet in the list. This can be used to move
to the previous packet even if the packet list doesn't have
keyboard focus.
First Packet
Jump to the first packet of the capture file.
Last Packet
Jump to the last packet of the capture file.
41
User Interface
3.9. The "Capture" menu

The Wireshark Capture menu contains the fields shown in Table 3.6, “Capture menu items”.
Figure 3.7. The "Capture" Menu
Table 3.6. Capture menu items

Interfaces...
This menu item brings up a dialog box that shows what's go-
ing on at the network interfaces Wireshark knows of, see
Section 4.4, “The "Capture Interfaces" dialog box”) .
Options... Ctrl+K
This menu item brings up the Capture Options dialog box
(discussed further in Section 4.5, “The "Capture Options"
dialog box”) and allows you to start capturing packets.
Start
Immediately start capturing packets with the same settings
than the last time.
Stop Ctrl+E
This menu item stops the currently running capture, see Sec-
tion 4.9.1, “Stop the running capture”) .
Restart
This menu item stops the currently running capture and starts
again with the same options, this is just for convenience.
42
User Interface

Capture Fil-
ters... This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you to cre-
ate and edit capture filters. You can name filters, and you can
save them for future use. More detail on this subject is
provided in Section 6.6, “Defining and saving filters”
43
User Interface
3.10. The "Analyze" menu

The Wireshark Analyze menu contains the fields shown in Table 3.7, “Analyze menu items”.
Figure 3.8. The "Analyze" Menu
Table 3.7. Analyze menu items

Display Fil-
ters... This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you to cre-
ate and edit display filters. You can name filters, and you can
save them for future use. More detail on this subject is
provided in Section 6.6, “Defining and saving filters”
Apply as Filter
> ... These menu items will change the current display filter and
apply the changed filter immediately. Depending on the
chosen menu item, the current display filter string will be re-
placed or appended to by the selected protocol field in the
packet details pane.
Prepare a Fil-
ter > ... These menu items will change the current display filter but
won't apply the changed filter. Depending on the chosen
menu item, the current display filter string will be replaced or
appended to by the selected protocol field in the packet de-
tails pane.
44
User Interface

Firewall ACL
Rules This allows you to create command-line ACL rules for many
different firewall products, including Cisco IOS, Linux Net-
filter (iptables), OpenBSD pf and Windows Firewall (via net-
sh). Rules for MAC addresses, IPv4 addresses, TCP and
UDP ports, and IPv4+port combinations are supported.
It is assumed that the rules will be applied to an outside inter-

face.
------
Enabled Proto- Shift+Ctrl+R
cols... This menu item allows the user to enable/disable protocol
dissectors, see Section 9.4.1, “The "Enabled Protocols" dia-
log box”
Decode As...
This menu item allows the user to force Wireshark to decode
certain packets as a particular protocol, see Section 9.4.2,
“User Specified Decodes”
User Specified
Decodes... This menu item allows the user to force Wireshark to decode
certain packets as a particular protocol, see Section 9.4.3,
“Show User Specified Decodes”
------
Follow TCP
Stream This menu item brings up a separate window and displays all
the TCP segments captured that are on the same TCP connec-
tion as a selected packet, see Section 7.2, “Following TCP
streams”
Follow SSL
Stream Same functionality as "Follow TCP Stream" but for SSL
streams. XXX - how to provide the SSL keys?
Expert Info
Open a dialog showing some expert information about the
captured packets in a log style display. The amount of in-
formation will depend on the protocol and varies from very
detailed to none existing. This is currently a work in pro-
gress. XXX - add a new section about this and link from here
Expert Info
Composite Same information as in "Expert Info" but trying to group
items together for faster analysis.
45
User Interface
3.11. The "Statistics" menu

The Wireshark Statistics menu contains the fields shown in Table 3.8, “Statistics menu items”.
Figure 3.9. The "Statistics" Menu
All menu items will bring up a new window showing specific statistical information.
Table 3.8. Statistics menu items

Summary
Show information about the data captured, see Section 8.2,
“The "Summary" window”.
Protocol Hier-
archy Display a hierarchical tree of protocol statistics, see Sec-
tion 8.3, “The "Protocol Hierarchy" window”.
Conversations
Display a list of conversations (traffic between two end-
points), see Section 8.5.2, “The "Conversations" window”.
Endpoints
Display a list of endpoints (traffic to/from an address), see
Section 8.4.2, “The "Endpoints" window”.
IO Graphs
Display user specified graphs (e.g. the number of packets in
the course of time), see Section 8.6, “The "IO Graphs" win-
dow”.
46
User Interface

------
Conversation
List Display a list of conversations, obsoleted by the combined
window of Conversations above, see Section 8.5.3, “The pro-
tocol specific "Conversation List" windows”.
Endpoint List
Display a list of endpoints, obsoleted by the combined win-
dow of Endpoints above, see Section 8.4.3, “The protocol
specific "Endpoint List" windows”.
Service Re-
sponse Time Display the time between a request and the corresponding re-
sponse, see Section 8.7, “Service Response Time”.
------
ANSI
See Section 8.8, “The protocol specific statistics windows”
GSM
H.225...
ISUP Message
Types See Section 8.8, “The protocol specific statistics windows”
MTP3
RTP
SCTP
SIP
VoIP Calls...
WAP-WSP...
------
BOOTP-DHCP
HTTP
HTTP request/response statistics, see Section 8.8, “The pro-
tocol specific statistics windows”
ISUP Messages
ONC-RPC Pro-
grams See Section 8.8, “The protocol specific statistics windows”
TCP Stream
Graph See Section 8.8, “The protocol specific statistics windows”
47
User Interface
3.12. The "Help" menu

The Wireshark Help menu contains the fields shown in Table 3.9, “Help menu items”.
Figure 3.10. The "Help" Menu
Table 3.9. Help menu items

Contents F1
This menu item brings up a basic help system.
Supported Pro-
tocols This menu item brings up a dialog box showing the suppor-
ted protocols and protocol fields.
Manual Pages
> ... This menu item starts a Web browser showing one of the loc-
ally installed html manual pages.
Wireshark On-
line > ... This menu item starts a Web browser showing the chosen
webpage from: http://www.wireshark.org.
------
About Wire-
shark This menu item brings up an information window that
provides some information on Wireshark, such as the plu-
gins, the used folders, ...
48
User Interface
Note!
Calling a Web browser might be unsupported in your version of Wireshark. If this is
the case, the corresponding menu items will be hidden.
Note!
If calling a Web browser fails on your machine, maybe because just nothing happens
or the browser is started but no page is shown, have a look at the web browser setting
in the preferences dialog.
49
User Interface
3.13. The "Main" toolbar

The main toolbar provides quick access to frequently used items from the menu. This toolbar cannot
be customized by the user, but it can be hidden using the View menu, if the space on the screen is
needed to show even more packet data.
As in the menu, only the items useful in the current program state will be available. The others will
be greyed out (e.g. you cannot save a capture file if you haven't loaded one).
Figure 3.11. The "Main" toolbar
Table 3.10. Main toolbar items

Toolbar Toolbar Item Corresponding Description
Icon Menu Item
Interfaces... Capture/Inter-
faces... This item brings up the Capture Interfaces List
dialog box (discussed further in Section 4.3,
“Start Capturing”).
Options... Capture/Options...
This item brings up the Capture Options dialog
box (discussed further in Section 4.3, “Start Cap-
turing”) and allows you to start capturing pack-
ets.
Start Capture/Start
This item starts capturing packets with the op-
tions form the last time.
Stop Capture/Stop
This item stops the currently running live capture
process Section 4.3, “Start Capturing”).
Restart Capture/Restart
This item stops the currently running live capture
process and restarts it again, for convenience.
------
Open... File/Open...
This item brings up the file open dialog box that
allows you to load a capture file for viewing. It is
discussed in more detail in Section 5.2.1, “The
"Open Capture File" dialog box”.
Save As... File/Save As...
This item allows you to save the current capture
file to whatever file you would like. It pops up
the Save Capture File As dialog box (which is
discussed further in Section 5.3.1, “The "Save
Capture File As" dialog box”).
Note!
If you currently have a temporary
capture file, the Save icon
will be shown instead.
50
User Interface

Icon Menu Item
Close File/Close
This item closes the current capture. If you have
not saved the capture, you will be asked to save it
first.
Reload View/Reload
This item allows you to reload the current cap-
ture file.
Print... File/Print...
This item allows you to print all (or some of) the
packets in the capture file. It pops up the Wire-
shark Print dialog box (which is discussed further
in Section 5.7, “Printing packets”).
------
Find Packet... Edit/Find Packet...
This item brings up a dialog box that allows you
to find a packet. There is further information on
finding packets in Section 6.7, “Finding packets”.
Go Back Go/Go Back
This item jumps back in the packet history.
Go Forward Go/Go Forward

This item jumps forward in the packet history.
Go to Packet... Go/Go to Packet...

to specify a packet number to go to that packet.
Go To First Go/First Packet
Packet This item jumps to the first packet of the capture
file.
Go To Last Pack- Go/Last Packet
et This item jumps to the last packet of the capture
file.
------
Colorize View/Colorize
Colorize the packet list (or not).
Auto Scroll in View/Auto Scroll

Live Capture in Live Capture Auto scroll packet list while doing a live capture
(or not).
------
Zoom In View/Zoom In
Zoom into the packet data (increase the font
size).
Zoom Out View/Zoom Out
Zoom out of the packet data (decrease the font
size).
Normal Size View/Normal Size
Set zoom level back to 100%.
Resize Columns View/Resize

Columns Resize columns, so the content fits into them.
------
Capture Filters... Capture/Capture
Filters... This item brings up a dialog box that allows you
to create and edit capture filters. You can name
filters, and you can save them for future use.
51
User Interface

Icon Menu Item
More detail on this subject is provided in Sec-

tion 6.6, “Defining and saving filters”.
Display Filters... Analyze/Display
Filters... This item brings up a dialog box that allows you
to create and edit display filters. You can name
filters, and you can save them for future use.
More detail on this subject is provided in Sec-
tion 6.6, “Defining and saving filters”.
Coloring Rules... View/Coloring
Rules... This item brings up a dialog box that allows you
color packets in the packet list pane according to
filter expressions you choose. It can be very use-
ful for spotting certain types of packets. More de-
tail on this subject is provided in Section 9.3,
“Packet colorization”.
Preferences... Edit/Preferences
to set preferences for many parameters that con-
trol Wireshark. You can also save your prefer-
ences so Wireshark will use them the next time
you start it. More detail is provided in Sec-
tion 9.5, “Preferences”
------
Help Help/Contents
This item brings up help dialog box.
52
User Interface
3.14. The "Filter" toolbar

The filter toolbar lets you quickly edit and apply display filters. More information on display filters
is available in Section 6.3, “Filtering packets while viewing”.
Figure 3.12. The "Filter" toolbar
Table 3.11. Filter toolbar items

Toolbar Toolbar Item Description
Icon
Filter:
Brings up the filter construction dialog, described in Figure 6.7, “The
"Capture Filters" and "Display Filters" dialog boxes”.
Filter input
The area to enter or edit a display filter string, see Section 6.4,
“Building display filter expressions” . A syntax check of your filter
string is done while you are typing. The background will turn red if
you enter an incomplete or invalid string, and will become green
when you enter a valid string. You can click on the pull down arrow
to select a previously-entered filter string from a list. The entries in
the pull down list will remain available even after a program restart.
Note!
After you've changed something in this field, don't for-
get to press the Apply button (or the Enter/Return key),
to apply this filter string to the display.
Note!
This field is also where the current filter in effect is dis-
played.
Expression...
The middle button labeled "Add Expression..." opens a dialog box
that lets you edit a display filter from a list of protocol fields, de-
scribed in Section 6.5, “The "Filter Expression" dialog box”
Clear
Reset the current display filter and clears the edit area.
Apply
Apply the current value in the edit area as the new display filter.
Note!
Applying a display filter on large capture files might
take quite a long time!
53
User Interface
3.15. The "Packet List" pane

The packet list pane displays all the packets in the current capture file.
Figure 3.13. The "Packet List" pane
Each line in the packet list corresponds to one packet in the capture file. If you select a line in this
pane, more details will be displayed in the "Packet Details" and "Packet Bytes" panes.
While dissecting a packet, Wireshark will place information from the protocol dissectors into the
columns. As higher level protocols might overwrite information from lower levels, you will typic-
ally see the information from the highest possible level only.
For example, let's look at a packet containing TCP inside IP inside an Ethernet packet. The Ethernet
dissector will write its data (such as the Ethernet addresses), the IP dissector will overwrite this by
its own (such as the IP addresses), the TCP dissector will overwrite the IP information, and so on.
There are a lot of different columns available. Which columns are displayed can be selected by pref-
erence settings, see Section 9.5, “Preferences”.
The default columns will show:
• No. The number of the packet in the capture file. This number won't change, even if a display
filter is used.
• Time The timestamp of the packet. The presentation format of this timestamp can be changed,
see Section 6.10, “Time display formats and time references”.
• Source The address where this packet is coming from.
• Destination The address where this packet is going to.
• Protocol The protocol name in a short (perhaps abbreviated) version.
• Info Additional information about the packet content.
There is a context menu (right mouse click) available, see details in Figure 6.3, “Pop-up menu of the
"Packet List" pane”.
54
User Interface
3.16. The "Packet Details" pane

The packet details pane shows the current packet (selected in the "Packet List" pane) in a more de-
tailed form.
Figure 3.14. The "Packet Details" pane
This pane shows the protocols and protocol fields of the packet selected in the "Packet List" pane.
The protocols and fields of the packet are displayed using a tree, which can be expanded and col-
lapsed.
There is a context menu (right mouse click) available, see details in Figure 6.4, “Pop-up menu of the
"Packet Details" pane”.
Some protocol fields are specially displayed.
• Generated fields Wireshark itself will generate additional protocol fields which are surrounded
by brackets. The information in these fields is derived from the known context to other packets
in the capture file. For example, Wireshark is doing a sequence/acknowledge analysis of each
TCP stream, which is displayed in the [SEQ/ACK analysis] fields of the TCP protocol.
• Links If Wireshark detected a relationship to another packet in the capture file, it will generate a
link to that packet. Links are underlined and displayed in blue. If double-clicked, Wireshark
jumps to the corresponding packet.
55
User Interface
3.17. The "Packet Bytes" pane

The packet bytes pane shows the data of the current packet (selected in the "Packet List" pane) in a
hexdump style.
Figure 3.15. The "Packet Bytes" pane
As usual for a hexdump, the left side shows the offset in the packet data, in the middle the packet
data is shown in a hexadecimal representation and on the right the corresponding ASCII characters
(or . if not appropriate) are displayed.
Depending on the packet data, sometimes more than one page is available, e.g. when Wireshark has
reassembled some packets into a single chunk of data, see Section 7.5, “Packet Reassembling”. In
this case there are some additional tabs shown at the bottom of the pane to let you select the page
you want to see.
Figure 3.16. The "Packet Bytes" pane with tabs
Note!
The additional pages might contain data picked from multiple packets.
The context menu (right mouse click) of the tab labels will show a list of all available pages. This
can be helpful if the size in the pane is too small for all the tab labels.
56
User Interface
3.18. The Statusbar

The statusbar displays informational messages.
In general, the left side will show context related information, while the right side will show the cur-
rent number of packets.
Figure 3.17. The initial Statusbar
This statusbar is shown while no capture file is loaded, e.g. when Wireshark is started.
Figure 3.18. The Statusbar with a loaded capture file
The left side shows information about the capture file, its name, its size and the elapsed time while it
was being captured.
The right side shows the current number of packets in the capture file. The following values are dis-
played:
• P: the number of captured packets
• D: the number of packets currently being displayed
• M: the number of marked packets
Figure 3.19. The Statusbar with a selected protocol field
This is displayed if you have selected a protocol field from the "Packet Details" pane.
Tip!
The value between the brackets (in this example arp.opcode) can be used as a display
filter string, representing the selected protocol field.
57
User Interface
58
Chapter 4. Capturing Live Network
Data
4.1. Introduction
Capturing live network data is one of the major features of Wireshark.
The Wireshark capture engine provides the following features:
• Capture from different kinds of network hardware (Ethernet, Token Ring, ATM, ...).
• Stop the capture on different triggers like: amount of captured data, captured time, captured
number of packets.
• Simultaneously show decoded packets while keep on capturing.
• Filter packets, reducing the amount of data to be captured, see Section 4.8, “Filtering while cap-
turing”.
• Capturing into multiple files while doing a long term capture, and in addition the option to form
a ringbuffer of these files, keeping only the last x files, useful for a "very long term" capture, see
Section 4.6, “Capture files and file modes”.
The capture engine still lacks the following features:
• Simultaneous capturing from multiple network interfaces (however, you can start multiple in-
stances of Wireshark and merge capture files later).
• Stop capturing (or doing some other action), depending on the captured data.
59
Capturing Live Network Data
4.2. Prerequisites
Setting up Wireshark to capture packets for the first time can be tricky.
Tip!
A comprehensive guide "How To setup a Capture" is available at: ht-
tp://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup.
Here are some common pitfalls:
• You need to have root / Administrator privileges to start a live capture.
• You need to choose the right network interface to capture packet data from.
• You need to capture at the right place in the network to see the traffic you want to see.
• ... and a lot more!.
If you have any problems setting up your capture environment, you should have a look at the guide
mentioned above.
60
4.3. Start Capturing

One of the following methods can be used to start capturing packets with Wireshark:
• You can get an overview of the available local interfaces using the " Capture Interfaces"
dialog box, see Figure 4.1, “The "Capture Interfaces" dialog box”. You can start a capture from
this dialog box, using (one of) the "Capture" button(s).
• You can start capturing using the " Capture Options" dialog box, see Figure 4.2, “The
"Capture Options" dialog box”.
• If you have selected the right capture options before, you can immediately start a capture using
the " Capture Start" menu / toolbar item. The capture process will start immediately.
• If you already know the name of the capture interface, you can start Wireshark from the com-
mand line and use the following:
wireshark -i eth0 -k
This will start Wireshark capturing on interface eth0, more details can be found at: Section 9.2,
“Start Wireshark from the command line”.
61
4.4. The "Capture Interfaces" dialog box

When you select "Interfaces..." from the Capture menu, Wireshark pops up the "Capture Interfaces"
dialog box as shown in Figure 4.1, “The "Capture Interfaces" dialog box”.
Warning!
As the "Capture Interfaces" dialog is showing live captured data, it is consuming a lot
of system resources. Close this dialog as soon as possible to prevent excessive system
load.
Note!
This dialog box will only show the local interfaces Wireshark knows of. As Wireshark
might not be able to detect all local interfaces, and it cannot detect the remote inter-
faces available, there could be more capture interfaces available than listed.
Figure 4.1. The "Capture Interfaces" dialog box
Description The interface description provided by the operating system.
IP The first IP address Wireshark could resolve from this interface. If

no address could be resolved (e.g. no DHCP server available), "un-
known" will be displayed. If more than one IP address could be re-
solved, only the first is shown (unpredictable which one in that
case).
Packets The number of packets captured from this interface, since this dia-
log was opened. Will be greyed out, if no packet was captured in
the last second.
Packets/s Number of packets captured in the last second. Will be greyed out,
if no packet was captured in the last second.
Stop Stop a currently running capture.
Capture Start a capture on this interface immediately, using the settings

from the last capture.
Options Open the Capture Options dialog with this interface selected, see
Section 4.5, “The "Capture Options" dialog box”.
Details (Win32 only) Open a dialog with detailed information about the interface.
Close Close this dialog box.
62
63
4.5. The "Capture Options" dialog box

When you select Start... from the Capture menu (or use the corresponding item in the "Main" tool-
bar), Wireshark pops up the "Capture Options" dialog box as shown in Figure 4.2, “The "Capture
Options" dialog box”.
Figure 4.2. The "Capture Options" dialog box
Tip!
If you are unsure which options to choose in this dialog box, just try keeping the de-
faults as this should work well in many cases.
You can set the following fields in this dialog box:
4.5.1. Capture frame

Interface This field specifies the interface you want to capture on. You
can only capture on one interface, and you can only capture
on interfaces that Wireshark has found on the system. It is a
64
drop-down list, so simply click on the button on the right

hand side and select the interface you want. It defaults to the
first non-loopback interface that supports capturing, and if
there are none, the first loopback interface. On some systems,
loopback interfaces cannot be used for capturing (loopback
interfaces are not available on Windows platforms).
This field performs the same function as the -i <interface>

command line option.
IP address The IP address(es) of the selected interface. If no address

could be resolved from the system, "unknown" will be shown.
Link-layer header type Unless you are in the rare situation that you need this, just
keep the default. For a detailed description, see Section 4.7,
“Link-layer header type”
Buffer size: n megabyte(s) Enter the buffer size to be used while capturing. This is the
size of the kernel buffer which will keep the captured packets,
until they are written to disk. If you encounter packet drops,
try increasing this value.
Note
This option is only available on Windows plat-
forms.
Capture packets in promiscuous This checkbox allows you to specify that Wireshark should
mode put the interface in promiscuous mode when capturing. If you
do not specify this, Wireshark will only capture the packets
going to or from your computer (not all packets on your LAN
segment).
Note
If some other process has put the interface in
promiscuous mode you may be capturing in
promiscuous mode even if you turn off this op-
tion
Note
Even in promiscuous mode you still won't ne-
cessarily see all packets on your LAN segment,
see http:/ / www.wireshark.org/
faq.html#promiscsniff for some more explana-
tions.
Limit each packet to n bytes This field allows you to specify the maximum amount of data
that will be captured for each packet, and is sometimes re-
ferred to as the snaplen. If disabled, the default is 65535,
which will be sufficient for most protocols. Some rules of
thumb:
• If you are unsure, just keep the default value.
• If you don't need all of the data in a packet - for example,

if you only need the link-layer, IP, and TCP headers - you
might want to choose a small snapshot length, as less
65
CPU time is required for copying packets, less buffer

space is required for packets, and thus perhaps fewer
packets will be dropped if traffic is very heavy.
• If you don't capture all of the data in a packet, you might

find that the packet data you want is in the part that's
dropped, or that reassembly isn't possible as the data re-
quired for reassembly is missing.
Capture Filter This field allows you to specify a capture filter. Capture fil-
ters are discussed in more details in Section 4.8, “Filtering
while capturing”. It defaults to empty, or no filter.
You can also click on the button labelled Capture Filter, and
Wireshark will bring up the Capture Filters dialog box and al-
low you to create and/or select a filter. Please see Section 6.6,
“Defining and saving filters”
4.5.2. Capture File(s) frame

An explanation about capture file usage can be found in Section 4.6, “Capture files and file modes”.
File This field allows you to specify the file name that will be
used for the capture file. This field is left blank by default. If
the field is left blank, the capture data will be stored in a tem-
porary file, see Section 4.6, “Capture files and file modes” for
details.
You can also click on the button to the right of this field to
browse through the filesystem.
Use multiple files Instead of using a single file, Wireshark will automatically
switch to a new one, if a specific trigger condition is reached.
Next file every n megabyte(s) Multiple files only: Switch to the next file after the given
number of byte(s)/kilobyte(s)/megabyte(s)/gigabyte(s) have
been captured.
Next file every n minute(s) Multiple files only: Switch to the next file after the given
number of second(s)/minutes(s)/hours(s)/days(s) have
elapsed.
Ring buffer with n files Multiple files only: Form a ring buffer of the capture files,
with the given number of files.
Stop capture after n file(s) Multiple files only: Stop capturing after switching to the next
file the given number of times.
4.5.3. Stop Capture... frame

... after n packet(s) Stop capturing after the given number of packets have been
captured.
... after n megabytes(s) Stop capturing after the given number of

byte(s)/kilobyte(s)/megabyte(s)/gigabyte(s) have been cap-
tured. This option is greyed out, if "Use multiple files" is se-
lected.
66
... after n minute(s) Stop capturing after the given number of

second(s)/minutes(s)/hours(s)/days(s) have elapsed.
4.5.4. Display Options frame

Update list of packets in real time This option allows you to specify that Wireshark should up-
date the packet list pane in real time. If you do not specify
this, Wireshark does not display any packets until you stop
the capture. When you check this, Wireshark captures in a
separate process and feeds the captures to the display process.
Automatic scrolling in live cap- This option allows you to specify that Wireshark should scroll
ture the packet list pane as new packets come in, so you are al-
ways looking at the last packet. If you do not specify this,
Wireshark simply adds new packets onto the end of the list,
but does not scroll the packet list pane. This option is greyed
out if "Update list of packets in real time" is disabled.
Hide capture info dialog If this option is checked, the following capture info dialog
will be hidden.
4.5.5. Name Resolution frame

Enable MAC name resolution This option allows you to control whether or not Wireshark
translates MAC addresses into names, see Section 7.6, “Name
Resolution”.
Enable network name resolution This option allows you to control whether or not Wireshark
translates network addresses into names, see Section 7.6,
Enable transport name resolu- This option allows you to control whether or not Wireshark
tion translates transport addresses into protocols, see Section 7.6,
4.5.6. Buttons
Once you have set the values you desire and have selected the options you need, simply click on
Start to commence the capture, or Cancel to cancel the capture.
If you start a capture, Wireshark allows you to stop capturing when you have enough packets cap-
tured, for details see Section 4.9, “While a Capture is running ...”.
67
4.6. Capture files and file modes

While capturing, the underlying libpcap capturing engine will grab the packets from the network
card and keep the packet data in a (relatively) small kernel buffer. This data is read by Wireshark
and saved into the capture file(s) the user specified.
Different modes of operation are available when saving this packet data to the capture file(s).
Tip!
Working with large files (several 100 MB's) can be quite slow. If you plan to do a long
term capture or capturing from a high traffic network, think about using one of the
"Multiple files" options. This will spread the captured packets over several smaller
files which can be much more pleasant to work with.
Note!
Using Multiple files may cut context related information. Wireshark keeps context in-
formation of the loaded packet data, so it can report context related problems (like a
stream error) and keeps information about context related protocols (e.g. where data is
exchanged at the establishing phase and only referred to in later packets). As it keeps
this information only for the loaded file, using one of the multiple file modes may cut
these contexts. If the establishing phase is saved in one file and the things you would
like to see is in another, you might not see some of the valuable context related inform-
ation.
Tip!
Information about the folders used for the capture file(s), can be found in Appendix A,
Files and Folders.
Table 4.1. Capture file mode selected by capture options

"File" option "Use multiple "Ring buffer Mode Resulting file-
files" option with n files" op- name(s) used
tion
- - - Single temporary etherXXXXXX
file (where XXXXXX is
a unique number)
foo.cap - - Single named file foo.cap
foo.cap x - Multiple files, foo_00001_2004020
continuous 5110102.cap,
foo_00002_2004020
5110102.cap, ...
foo.cap x x Multiple files, foo_00001_2004020
ring buffer 5110102.cap,
foo_00002_2004020
5110102.cap, ...
Single temporary file A temporary file will be created and used (this is the default).
After the capturing is stopped, this file can be saved later un-
der a user specified name.
68
Single named file A single capture file will be used. If you want to place the
new capture file to a specific folder, choose this mode.
Multiple files, continuous Like the "Single named file" mode, but a new file is created
and used, after reaching one of the multiple file switch condi-
tions (one of the "Next file every ..." values).
Multiple files, ring buffer Much like "Multiple files continuous", reaching one of the
multiple files switch conditions (one of the "Next file every
..." values) will switch to the next file. This will be a newly
created file if value of "Ring buffer with n files" is not
reached, otherwise it will replace the oldest of the formerly
used files (thus forming a "ring").
This mode will limit the maximum disk usage, even for an
unlimited amount of capture input data, keeping the latest
captured data.
69
4.7. Link-layer header type

In the usual case, you won't have to choose this link-layer header type. The following paragraphs
describe the exceptional cases, where selecting this type is possible, so you will have a guide of
what to do:
If you are capturing on an 802.11 device on some versions of BSD, this might offer a choice of "Eth-
ernet" or "802.11". "Ethernet" will cause the captured packets to have fake Ethernet headers;
"802.11" will cause them to have IEEE 802.11 headers. Unless the capture needs to be read by an
application that doesn't support 802.11 headers, you should select "802.11".
If you are capturing on an Endace DAG card connected to a synchronous serial line, this might offer
a choice of "PPP over serial" or "Cisco HDLC"; if the protocol on the serial line is PPP, select "PPP
over serial", and if the protocol on the serial line is Cisco HDLC, select "Cisco HDLC".
If you are capturing on an Endace DAG card connected to an ATM network, this might offer a
choice of "RFC 1483 IP-over-ATM" or "Sun raw ATM". If the only traffic being captured is RFC
1483 LLC-encapsulated IP, or if the capture needs to be read by an application that doesn't support
SunATM headers, select "RFC 1483 IP-over-ATM", otherwise select "Sun raw ATM".
If you are capturing on an Ethernet device, this might offer a choice of "Ethernet" or "DOCSIS". If
you are capturing traffic from a Cisco Cable Modem Termination System that is putting DOCSIS
traffic onto the Ethernet to be captured, select "DOCSIS", otherwise select "Ethernet".
70
4.8. Filtering while capturing

Wireshark uses the libpcap filter language for capture filters. This is explained in the tcpdump man
page, which can be hard to understand, so it's explained here to some extent.
Tip!
You will find a lot of Capture Filter examples at ht-
tp://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureFilters.
You enter the capture filter into the Filter field of the Wireshark Capture Options dialog box, as
shown in Figure 4.2, “The "Capture Options" dialog box”. The following is an outline of the syntax
of the tcpdump capture filter language. See the expression option at the tcpdump manual page for
details: http://www.tcpdump.org/tcpdump_man.html.
A capture filter takes the form of a series of primitive expressions connected by conjunctions (and/
or) and optionally preceded by not:
[not] primitive [and|or [not] primitive ...]
An example is shown in Example 4.1, “ A capture filter for telnet that captures traffic to and from a
particular host ”.
Example 4.1. A capture filter for telnet that captures traffic to and from a
particular host
tcp port 23 and host 10.0.0.5
This example captures telnet traffic to and from the host 10.0.0.5, and shows how to use two primit-
ives and the and conjunction. Another example is shown in Example 4.2, “ Capturing all telnet
traffic not from 10.0.0.5”, and shows how to capture all telnet traffic except that from 10.0.0.5.
Example 4.2. Capturing all telnet traffic not from 10.0.0.5
tcp port 23 and not src host 10.0.0.5
XXX - add examples to the following list.
A primitive is simply one of the following:
[src|dst] host <host> This primitive allows you to filter on a host IP address or
name. You can optionally precede the primitive with the
keyword src|dst to specify that you are only interested in
source or destination addresses. If these are not present, pack-
ets where the specified address appears as either the source or
the destination address will be selected.
ether [src|dst] host <ehost> This primitive allows you to filter on Ethernet host addresses.
You can optionally include the keyword src|dst between the
keywords ether and host to specify that you are only inter-
ested in source or destination addresses. If these are not
71
present, packets where the specified address appears in either

the source or destination address will be selected.
gateway host <host> This primitive allows you to filter on packets that used host
as a gateway. That is, where the Ethernet source or destina-
tion was host but neither the source nor destination IP address
was host.
[src|dst] net <net> [{mask This primitive allows you to filter on network numbers. You
<mask>}|{len <len>}] can optionally precede this primitive with the keyword
src|dst to specify that you are only interested in a source or
destination network. If neither of these are present, packets
will be selected that have the specified network in either the
source or destination address. In addition, you can specify
either the netmask or the CIDR prefix for the network if they
are different from your own.
[tcp|udp] [src|dst] port <port> This primitive allows you to filter on TCP and UDP port
numbers. You can optionally precede this primitive with the
keywords src|dst and tcp|udp which allow you to specify that
you are only interested in source or destination ports and TCP
or UDP packets respectively. The keywords tcp|udp must ap-
pear before src|dst.
If these are not specified, packets will be selected for both the
TCP and UDP protocols and when the specified address ap-
pears in either the source or destination port field.
less|greater <length> This primitive allows you to filter on packets whose length
was less than or equal to the specified length, or greater than
or equal to the specified length, respectively.
ip|ether proto <protocol> This primitive allows you to filter on the specified protocol at
either the Ethernet layer or the IP layer.
ether|ip broadcast|multicast This primitive allows you to filter on either Ethernet or IP

broadcasts or multicasts.
<expr> relop <expr> This primitive allows you to create complex filter expressions
that select bytes or ranges of bytes in packets. Please see the
tcpdump man page at http:/ / www.tcpdump.org/ tcp-
dump_man.html for more details.
4.8.1. Automatic Remote Traffic Filtering

If Wireshark is running remotely (using e.g. SSH, an exported X11 window, a terminal server, ...),
the remote content has to be transported over the network, adding a lot of (usually unimportant)
packets to the actually interesting traffic.
To avoid this, Wireshark tries to figure out if it's remotely connected (by looking at some specific
environment variables) and automatically creates a capture filter that matches aspects of the connec-
tion.
The following environment variables are analyzed:
SSH_CONNECTION (ssh) <remote IP> <remote port> <local IP> <local port>
SSH_CLIENT (ssh) <remote IP> <remote port> <local port>
REMOTEHOST (tcsh, others?) <remote name>
72
DISPLAY (x11) [remote name]:<display num>
SESSIONNAME (terminal server) <remote name>
73
4.9. While a Capture is running ...

While a capture is running, the following dialog box is shown:
Figure 4.3. The "Capture Info" dialog box
This dialog box will inform you about the number of captured packets and the time since the capture
was started. The selection of which protocols are counted cannot be changed.
Tip!
This Capture Info dialog box can be hidden, using the "Hide capture info dialog" op-
tion in the Capture Options dialog box.
4.9.1. Stop the running capture

A running capture session will be stopped in one of the following ways:
1. Using the " Stop" button from the Capture Info dialog box .
74
Note!
The Capture Info dialog box might be hidden, if the option "Hide capture info
dialog" is used.
2. Using the menu item "Capture/ Stop".
3. Using the toolbar item " Stop".
4. Pressing the accelerator keys: Ctrl+E.
5. The capture will be automatically stopped, if one of the Stop Conditions is exceeded, e.g. the
maximum amount of data was captured.
4.9.2. Restart a running capture

A running capture session can be restarted with the same capture options than the last time, this will
remove all packets previously captured. This can be useful, if some uninteresting packets are cap-
tured and there's no need to keep them.
Restart is a convenience function and equivalent to a capture stop following by an immediate cap-
ture start. A restart can be triggered in one of the following ways:
1. Using the menu item "Capture/ Restart".
2. Using the toolbar item " Restart".
75
76
Chapter 5. File Input / Output and
Printing
5.1. Introduction
This chapter will describe input and output of capture data.
• Open/Import capture files in various capture file formats
• Save/Export capture files in various capture file formats
• Merge capture files together
• Print packets
77
File Input / Output and Printing
5.2. Open capture files

Wireshark can read in previously saved capture files. To read them, simply select the menu or tool-
bar item: "File/ Open". Wireshark will then pop up the File Open dialog box, which is dis-
cussed in more detail in Section 5.2.1, “The "Open Capture File" dialog box”.
It's convenient to use drag-and-drop!

... to open a file, by simply dragging the desired file from your file manager and drop-
ping it onto Wireshark's main window. However, drag-and-drop is not available/won't
work in all desktop environments.
If you didn't save the current capture file before, you will be asked to do so, to prevent data loss (this
behaviour can be disabled in the preferences).
In addition to its native file format (libpcap format, also used by tcpdump/WinDump and other libp-
cap/WinPcap-based programs), Wireshark can read capture files from a large number of other pack-
et capture programs as well. See Section 5.2.2, “Input File Formats” for the list of capture formats
Wireshark understands.
5.2.1. The "Open Capture File" dialog box

The "Open Capture File" dialog box allows you to search for a capture file containing previously
captured packets for display in Wireshark. Table 5.1, “The system specific "Open Capture File" dia-
log box” shows some examples of the Wireshark Open File Dialog box.
The dialog appearance depends on your system!

The appearance of this dialog depends on the system and GTK+ toolkit version used.
However, the functionality remains basically the same on either system.
Common dialog behaviour on all systems:
• Select files and directories.
• Click the Open/Ok button to accept your selected file and open it.
• Click the Cancel button to go back to Wireshark and not load a capture file.
Wireshark extensions to the standard behaviour of these dialogs:
• View file preview information (like the filesize, the number of packets, ...), if you've selected a
capture file.
• Specify a display filter with the "Filter:" button and filter field. This filter will be used when
opening the new file. The text field background becomes green for a valid filter string and red
for an invalid one. Clicking on the Filter button causes Wireshark to pop up the Filters dialog
box (which is discussed further in Section 6.3, “Filtering packets while viewing”).
XXX - we need a better description of these read filters
• Specify which name resolution is to be performed for all packets by clicking on one of the "...
name resolution" check buttons. Details about name resolution can be found in Section 7.6,
78
Save a lot of time on huge capture files!

You can change the display filter and name resolution settings later while viewing the
packets. However, for huge capture files it can take a significant amount of extra time
changing these settings later, so in such situations it can be a good idea to set at least
the filter in advance here.
Table 5.1. The system specific "Open Capture File" dialog box
Microsoft Windows (GTK2 installed)
Figure 5.1. "Open" on native This is the common Windows file open dialog -
Windows plus some Wireshark extensions.
Specific for this dialog:
• If available, the "Help" button will lead you

to this section of this "User's Guide".
• XXX - the "Filter:" button currently doesn't

work on Windows!
• XXX - missing feature: If Wireshark doesn't

recognize the selected file as a capture file, it
should grey out the "Open" button.
Unix/Linux: GTK version >= 2.4
Figure 5.2. "Open" - new GTK This is the common Gimp/GNOME file open
version dialog - plus some Wireshark extensions.
• The "+ Add" button allows you to add a dir-

ectory, selected in the right-hand pane, to the
favorites list on the left. Those changes are
persistent.
• The "- Remove" button allows you to remove

a selected directory from that list again (the
items like: "Home", "Desktop", and "Filesys-
tem" cannot be removed).
• If Wireshark doesn't recognize the selected

file as a capture file, it will grey out the
"Open" button.
Unix/Linux: GTK version < 2.4 / Microsoft
79
Windows (GTK1 installed)
Figure 5.3. "Open" - old GTK version This is the file open dialog of former Gimp/
GNOME versions - plus some Wireshark exten-
sions.
• If Wireshark doesn't recognize the selected

file as a capture file, it will grey out the "Ok"
button.
5.2.2. Input File Formats

The following file formats from other capture tools can be opened by Wireshark:
• libpcap, tcpdump and various other tools using tcpdump's capture format
• Sun snoop and atmsnoop
• Shomiti/Finisar Surveyor captures
• Novell LANalyzer captures
• Microsoft Network Monitor captures
• AIX's iptrace captures
• Cinco Networks NetXray captures
• Network Associates Windows-based Sniffer and Sniffer Pro captures
• Network General/Network Associates DOS-based Sniffer (compressed or uncompressed) cap-

tures
• AG Group/WildPackets EtherPeek/TokenPeek/AiroPeek/EtherHelp/PacketGrabber captures
• RADCOM's WAN/LAN Analyzer captures
• Network Instruments Observer version 9 captures
• Lucent/Ascend router debug output
• HP-UX's nettl
• Toshiba's ISDN routers dump output
• ISDN4BSD i4btrace utility
• traces from the EyeSDN USB S0
• IPLog format from the Cisco Secure Intrusion Detection System
• pppd logs (pppdump format)
80
• the output from VMS's TCPIPtrace/TCPtrace/UCX$TRACE utilities
• the text output from the DBS Etherwatch VMS utility
• Visual Networks' Visual UpTime traffic capture
• the output from CoSine L2 debug
• the output from Accellent's 5Views LAN agents
• Endace Measurement Systems' ERF format captures
• Linux Bluez Bluetooth stack hcidump -w traces
• Catapult DCT2000 .out files
Open a file may fail due to invalid packet types!

It may not be possible to read some formats dependent on the packet types captured.
Ethernet captures are usually supported for most file formats, but other packet types
(e.g. token ring packets) may not be possible to read from all file formats.
81
5.3. Saving captured packets

You can save captured packets simply by using the Save As... menu item from the File menu under
Wireshark. You can choose which packets to save and which file format to be used.
Saving may reduce the available information!

Saving the captured packets will slightly reduce the amount of information, e.g. the
number of dropped packets will be lost, see Section A.1, “Capture Files” for details.
5.3.1. The "Save Capture File As" dialog box

The "Save Capture File As" dialog box allows you to save the current capture to a file. Table 5.2,
“The system specific "Save Capture File As" dialog box” shows some examples of this dialog box.
The dialog appearance depends on your system!

The appearance of this dialog depends on the system and GTK+ toolkit version used.
However, the functionality remains basically the same on either system.
Table 5.2. The system specific "Save Capture File As" dialog box
Figure 5.4. "Save" on native Windows This is the common Windows file save dialog -
plus some Wireshark extensions.
• If available, the "Help" button will lead you

to this section of this "User's Guide".
• If you don't provide a file extension to the fi-

lename - e.g. .pcap, Wireshark will append
the standard file extension for that file
format.
Figure 5.5. "Save" - new GTK version This is the common Gimp/GNOME file save
dialog - plus some Wireshark extensions.
• Clicking on the + at "Browse for other

folders" will allow you to browse files and
folders in your file system.
82

Figure 5.6. "Save" - old GTK version
This is the file save dialog of former Gimp/
sions.
With this dialog box, you can perform the following actions:
1. Type in the name of the file you wish to save the captured packets in, as a standard file name in
your file system.
2. Select the directory to save the file into.
83
3. Select the range of the packets to be saved, see Section 5.8, “The Packet Range frame”
4. Specify the format of the saved capture file by clicking on the File type drop down box. You
can choose from the types, described in Section 5.3.2, “Output File Formats”.
The selection of capture formats may be reduced!

Some capture formats may not be available, depending on the packet types cap-
tured.
File formats can be converted!

You can convert capture files from one format to another by reading in a capture
file and writing it out using a different format.
5. Click on the Save/Ok button to accept your selected file and save to it. If Wireshark has a prob-
lem saving the captured packets to the file you specified, it will display an error dialog box.
After clicking OK on that error dialog box, you can try again.
6. Click on the Cancel button to go back to Wireshark and not save the captured packets.
5.3.2. Output File Formats

Wireshark can save the packet data in it's "native" file format (libpcap) and in the file formats of
some other protocol analyzers, so other tools can read the capture data.
File formats have different time stamp accuracies!

Saving from the currently used to a different file format may reduce the time stamp ac-
curacy, see the Section 7.3, “Time Stamps” for details.
The following file formats can be saved by Wireshark (with the known file extensions):
• libpcap, tcpdump and various other tools using tcpdump's capture format (*.pcap,*.cap,*.dmp)
• Accellent 5Views (*.5vw)
• HP-UX's nettl (*.TRC0,*.TRC1)
• Microsoft Network Monitor - NetMon (*.cap)
• Network Associates Sniffer - DOS (*.cap,*.enc,*.trc,*fdc,*.syc)
• Network Associates Sniffer - Windows (*.cap)
• Network Instruments Observer version 9 (*.bfr)
• Novell LANalyzer (*.tr1)
• Sun snoop (*.snoop,*.cap)
• Visual Networks Visual UpTime traffic (*.*)
If the above tools will be more helpful than Wireshark is a different question ;-)
84
Third party protocol analyzers may require specific file

extensions!
Other protocol analyzers than Wireshark may require that the file has a certain file ex-
tension in order to read the files you generate with Wireshark, e.g.:
".cap" for Network Associates Sniffer - Windows
85
5.4. Merging capture files

Sometimes you need to merge several capture files into one. For example this can be useful, if you
have captured simultaneously from multiple interfaces at once (e.g. using multiple instances of
Wireshark).
Merging capture files can be done in three ways:
• Use the menu item "Merge" from the "File" menu, to open the merge dialog, see Section 5.4.1,
“The "Merge with Capture File" dialog box”. This menu item will be disabled, until you have
loaded a capture file.
• Use drag-and-drop to drop multiple files on the main window. Wireshark will try to merge the
packets in chronological order from the dropped files into a newly created temporary file. If you
drop only a single file, it will simply replace a (maybe) existing one.
• Use the mergecap tool, which is a command line tool to merge capture files. This tool provides
the most options to merge capture files, see Section D.7, “mergecap: Merging multiple capture
files into one ”.
5.4.1. The "Merge with Capture File" dialog box

This dialog box let you select a file to be merged into the currently loaded file.
You will be prompted for an unsaved file first!

If your current data wasn't saved before, you will be asked to save it first, before this
dialog box is shown.
Most controls of this dialog will work the same way as described in the "Open Capture File" dialog
box, see Section 5.2.1, “The "Open Capture File" dialog box”.
Specific controls of this merge dialog are:
Prepend packets to existing file Prepend the packets from the selected file before the currently
loaded packets.
Merge packets chronologically Merge both the packets from the selected and currently
loaded file in chronological order.
Append packets to existing file Append the packets from the selected file after the currently
loaded packets.
Table 5.3. The system specific "Merge Capture File As" dialog box
Figure 5.7. "Merge" on native This is the common Windows file open dialog -
Windows plus some Wireshark extensions.
86
Figure 5.8. "Merge" - new GTK This is the common Gimp/GNOME file open
version dialog - plus some Wireshark extensions.

Figure 5.9. "Merge" - old GTK
version This is the file open dialog of former Gimp/
sions.
87
5.5. File Sets

When using the "Multiple Files" option while doing a capture (see: Section 4.6, “Capture files and
file modes”), the capture data is spread over several capture files, called a file set.
As it can become tedious to work with a file set by hand, Wireshark provides some features to
handle these file sets in a convenient way.
How does Wireshark detect the files of a file set?
A filename in a file set uses the format Prefix_Number_DateTimeSuffix which might look
like this: "test_00001_20060420183910.pcap". All files of a file set share the same prefix
(e.g. "test") and suffix (e.g. ".pcap") and a varying middle part.
To find the files of a file set, Wireshark scans the directory where the currently loaded file
resides and scans for files matching the same filename pattern (prefix and suffix) than the cur-
rently loaded file.
This simple mechanism usually works well, but has it's drawbacks. If several file sets were
captured with the same prefix and suffix, Wireshark will detect them as a single file set. If
files were renamed or spread over several directories the mechanism will fail to find all files
of a set.
The following features in the "File Set" submenu of the "File" menu are available to work with file
sets in a convenient way:
• The List Files dialog box will list the files Wireshark has recognized as being part of the current
file set.
• Next File closes the current and opens the next file in the file set.
• Previous File closes the current and opens the previous file in the file set.
5.5.1. The "List Files" dialog box
Figure 5.10. The "List Files" dialog box
88
Each line contains information about a file of the file set:
• Filename the name of the file. If you click on the filename (or the radio button left to it), the
current file will be closed and the corresponding capture file will be opened.
• Created the creation time of the file
• Last Modified the last time the file was modified
• Size the size of the file
The last line will contain info about the currently used directory where all of the files in the file set
can be found.
The content of this dialog box is updated each time a capture file is opened/closed.
The Close button will, well, close the dialog box.
89
5.6. Exporting data

Wireshark provides several ways and formats to export packet data. This section describes general
ways to export data from Wireshark.
Note!
There are more specialized functions to export specific data, which will be described at
the appropriate places.
XXX - add detailed descriptions of the output formats and some sample output, too.
5.6.1. The "Export as Plain Text File" dialog box

Export packet data into a plain ASCII text file, much like the format used to print packets.
Figure 5.11. The "Export as Plain Text File" dialog box
• Export to file: frame chooses the file to export the packet data to.
• The Packet Range frame is described in Section 5.8, “The Packet Range frame”.
• The Packet Details frame is described in Section 5.9, “The Packet Format frame”.
5.6.2. The "Export as PostScript File" dialog box

Export packet data into PostScript, much like the format used to print packets.
90
Tip!
You can easily convert PostScript files to PDF files using ghostscript. For example:
export to a file named foo.ps and then call: ps2pdf foo.ps
Figure 5.12. The "Export as PostScript File" dialog box
• The Packet Details frame is described in Section 5.9, “The Packet Format frame”.
5.6.3. The "Export as CSV (Comma Separated Values)

File" dialog box
XXX - add screenshot
Export packet summary into CSV, used e.g. by spreadsheet programs to im-/export data.
5.6.4. The "Export as PSML File" dialog box

91
Export packet data into PSML. This is an XML based format including only the packet summary.
The PSML file specification is available at: http://www.nbee.org/Docs/NetPDL/PSML.htm.
Figure 5.13. The "Export as PSML File" dialog box
There's no such thing as a packet details frame for PSML export, as the packet format is defined by
the PSML specification.
5.6.5. The "Export as PDML File" dialog box

Export packet data into PDML. This is an XML based format including the packet details. The
PDML file specification is available at: http://www.nbee.org/Docs/NetPDL/PDML.htm.
The PDML specification is not officially released and Wireshark's implementation of it

is still in an early beta state, so please expect changes in future Wireshark versions.
Figure 5.14. The "Export as PDML File" dialog box
92
There's no such thing as a packet details frame for PDML export, as the packet format is defined by
the PDML specification.
5.6.6. The "Export selected packet bytes" dialog box

Export the bytes selected in the "Packet Bytes" pane into a raw binary file.
Figure 5.15. The "Export Selected Packet Bytes" dialog box
93
• Name: the filename to export the packet data to.
• The Save in folder: field lets you select the folder to save to (from some predefined folders).
• Browse for other folders provides a flexible way to choose a folder.
5.6.7. The "Export Objects" dialog box

This feature scans through HTTP streams in the currently open capture file or running capture and
takes reassembled objects such as HTML documents, image files, executables and anything else that
can be transferred over HTTP and lets you save them to disk. If you have a capture running, this list
is automatically updated every few seconds with any new objects seen. The saved objects can then
be opened with the proper viewer or executed in the case of executables (if it is for the same plat-
form you are running Wireshark on) without any further work on your part. This feature is not avail-
able in the GTK1 build of Wireshark.
Figure 5.16. The "Export Objects" dialog box
94
Columns:
• Packet num: The packet number in which this object was found. In some cases, there can be
multiple objects in the same packet.
• Hostname: The hostname of the server that sent the object as a response to an HTTP request.
• Content Type: The HTTP content type of this object.
• Bytes: The size of this object in bytes.
• Filename: The final part of the URI (after the last slash). This is typically a filename, but may
be a long complex looking string, which typically indicates that the file was received in response
to a HTTP POST request.
Buttons:
• Help: Opens this section in the user's guide.
• Close: Closes this dialog.
• Save As: Saves the currently selected object as a filename you specify. The default filename to
save as is taken from the filename column of the objects list.
• Save All: Saves all objects in the list using the filename from the filename column. You will be
asked what directory / folder to save them in. If the filename is invalid for the operating system /
file system you are running Wireshark on, then an error will appear and that object will not be
saved (but all of the others will be).
95
5.7. Printing packets

To print packets, select the "Print..." menu item from the File menu. When you do this, Wireshark
pops up the Print dialog box as shown in Figure 5.17, “The "Print" dialog box”.
5.7.1. The "Print" dialog box
Figure 5.17. The "Print" dialog box
The following fields are available in the Print dialog box:
Printer This field contains a pair of mutually exclusive radio buttons:
• Plain Text specifies that the packet print should be in plain text.
• PostScript specifies that the packet print process should use PostScript to
generate a better print output on PostScript aware printers.
• Output to file: specifies that printing be done to a file, which name is

entered in the field or selected using the browse button.
This field is where you enter the file to print to if you have selected Print
to a file, or you can click the button to browse the filesystem. It is greyed
out if Print to a file is not selected.
• Print command specifies that a command be used for printing.
96
Note!
These Print command fields are not available on windows
platforms.
This field specifies the command to use for printing. It is typically lpr.
You would change it to specify a particular queue if you need to print to a
queue other than the default. An example might be:
lpr -Pmypostscript
This field is greyed out if Output to file: is checked above.
Packet Range Select the packets to be printed, see Section 5.8, “The Packet Range frame”
Packet Format Select the output format of the packets to be printed. You can choose, how
each packet is printed, see Figure 5.19, “The "Packet Format" frame”
97
5.8. The Packet Range frame

The packet range frame is a part of various output related dialog boxes. It provides options to select
which packets should be processed by the output function.
Figure 5.18. The "Packet Range" frame
If the Captured button is set (default), all packets from the selected rule will be processed. If the
Displayed button is set, only the currently displayed packets are taken into account to the selected
rule.
• All packets will process all packets.
• Selected packet only process only the selected packet.
• Marked packets only process only the marked packets.
• From first to last marked packet process the packets from the first to the last marked one.
• Specify a packet range process a user specified range of packets, e.g. specifying 5,10-15,20-
will process the packet number five, the packets from packet number ten to fifteen (inclusive)
and every packet from number twenty to the end of the capture.
98
5.9. The Packet Format frame

The packet format frame is a part of various output related dialog boxes. It provides options to select
which parts of a packet should be used for the output function.
Figure 5.19. The "Packet Format" frame
• Packet summary line enable the output of the summary line, just as in the "Packet List" pane.
• Packet details enable the output of the packet details tree.
• All collapsed the info from the "Packet Details" pane in "all collapsed" state.
• As displayed the info from the "Packet Details" pane in the current state.
• All expanded the info from the "Packet Details" pane in "all expanded" state.
• Packet bytes enable the output of the packet bytes, just as in the "Packet Bytes" pane.
• Each packet on a new page put each packet on a separate page (e.g. when saving/printing to a
text file, this will put a form feed character between the packets).
99
100
Chapter 6. Working with captured
packets
6.1. Viewing packets you have captured
Once you have captured some packets, or you have opened a previously saved capture file, you can
view the packets that are displayed in the packet list pane by simply clicking on a packet in the
packet list pane, which will bring up the selected packet in the tree view and byte view panes.
You can then expand any part of the tree view by clicking on the plus sign (the symbol itself may
vary) to the left of that part of the payload, and you can select individual fields by clicking on them
in the tree view pane. An example with a TCP packet selected is shown in Figure 6.1, “Wireshark
with a TCP packet selected for viewing”. It also has the Acknowledgment number in the TCP head-
er selected, which shows up in the byte view as the selected bytes.
Figure 6.1. Wireshark with a TCP packet selected for viewing
You can also select and view packets the same way, while Wireshark is capturing, if you selected
"Update list of packets in real time" in the Wireshark Capture Preferences dialog box.
In addition, you can view individual packets in a separate window as shown in Figure 6.2, “Viewing
a packet in a separate window”. Do this by selecting the packet you are interested in the packet list
pane, and then select "Show Packet in New Windows" from the Display menu. This allows you to
easily compare two or even more packets.
101
Working with captured packets
Figure 6.2. Viewing a packet in a separate window
102
6.2. Pop-up menus

You can bring up a pop-up menu over either the "Packet List", "Packet Details" or "Packet Bytes"
pane by clicking your right mouse button at the corresponding pane.
6.2.1. Pop-up menu of the "Packet List" pane
Figure 6.3. Pop-up menu of the "Packet List" pane
The following table gives an overview of which functions are available in this pane, where to find
the corresponding function in the main menu, and a short description of each item.
Table 6.1. The menu items of the "Packet List" pop-up menu
Item Identical to main Description
menu's item:
Mark Packet Edit
(toggle) Mark/unmark a packet.
Set Time Refer- Edit
ence (toggle) Set/reset a time reference.
-----
Apply as Filter Analyze
Prepare and apply a display filter based on the currently se-
lected item.
Prepare a Filter Analyze
Prepare a display filter based on the currently selected
item.
Conversation Fil- -
This menu item applies a display filter with the address in-
103

menu's item:
ter
formation from the selected packet. E.g. the IP menu entry
will set a filter to show the traffic between the two IP ad-
dresses of the current packet. XXX - add a new section de-
scribing this better.
SCTP -
XXX - add an explanation of this.
Follow TCP Analyze
Stream Allows you to view all the data on a TCP stream between a
pair of nodes.
Follow SSL Analyze
Stream Same as "Follow TCP Stream" but for SSL. XXX - add a
new section describing this better.
-----
Copy/ Summary -
(Text) Copy the summary fields as displayed to the clipboard, as
tab-separated text.
Copy/ Summary -
(CSV) Copy the summary fields as displayed to the clipboard, as
comma-separated text.
Copy/ Bytes -
(Offset Hex Text) Copy the packet bytes to the clipboard in hexdump-like
format.
Copy/ Bytes -
(Offset Hex) Copy the packet bytes to the clipboard in hexdump-like
format, but without the text portion.
Copy/ Bytes -
(Printable Text Copy the packet bytes to the clipboard as ASCII text, ex-
Only) cluding non-printable characters.
Copy/ Bytes (Hex -
Stream) Copy the packet bytes to the clipboard as an unpunctuated
list of hex digits.
Copy/ Bytes -
(Binary Stream) Copy the packet bytes to the clipboard as raw binary. The
data is stored in the clipboard as MIME-type "application/oct-
et-stream".
This option is not available in versions of Wireshark built

using GTK+ 1.x.
-----
Export Selected File
Packet Bytes... This menu item is the same as the File menu item of the
same name. It allows you to export raw packet bytes to a
binary file.
-----
Decode As... Analyze
Change or apply a new relation between two dissectors.
Print... File
Print packets.
Show Packet in View
New Window Display the selected packet in a new window.
6.2.2. Pop-up menu of the "Packet Details" pane

104
Figure 6.4. Pop-up menu of the "Packet Details" pane
The following table gives an overview of which functions are available in this pane, where to find
the corresponding function in the main menu, and a short description of each item.
Table 6.2. The menu items of the "Packet Details" pop-up menu
menu's item:
Expand Subtrees View
Expand the currently selected subtree.
Expand All View
Expand all subtrees in all packets in the capture.
Collapse All View
Wireshark keeps a list of all the protocol subtrees that are
expanded, and uses it to ensure that the correct subtrees are
expanded when you display a packet. This menu item col-
lapses the tree view of all packets in the capture list.
-----
Copy/ Descrip- -
tion Copy the displayed text of the selected field to the system
clipboard.
Copy/ Bytes -
(Offset Hex Text) Copy the packet bytes to the clipboard in hexdump-like
format; similar to the Packet List Pane command, but cop-
ies only the bytes relevant to the selected part of the tree
105

menu's item:
(the bytes selected in the Packet Bytes Pane).

Copy/ Bytes -
(Offset Hex) Copy the packet bytes to the clipboard in hexdump-like
format, but without the text portion; similar to the Packet
List Pane command, but copies only the bytes relevant to
the selected part of the tree (the bytes selected in the Packet
Bytes Pane).
Copy/ Bytes -
(Printable Text Copy the packet bytes to the clipboard as ASCII text, ex-
Only) cluding non-printable characters; similar to the Packet List
Pane command, but copies only the bytes relevant to the
selected part of the tree (the bytes selected in the Packet
Bytes Pane).
Copy/ Bytes (Hex -
Stream) Copy the packet bytes to the clipboard as an unpunctuated
list of hex digits; similar to the Packet List Pane command,
but copies only the bytes relevant to the selected part of the
tree (the bytes selected in the Packet Bytes Pane).
Copy/ Bytes -
(Binary Stream) Copy the packet bytes to the clipboard as raw binary; simil-
ar to the Packet List Pane command, but copies only the
bytes relevant to the selected part of the tree (the bytes se-
lected in the Packet Bytes Pane). The data is stored in the
clipboard as MIME-type "application/octet-stream".
This option is not available in versions of Wireshark built

using GTK+ 1.x.
-----
Export Selected File
Packet Bytes... This menu item is the same as the File menu item of the
same name. It allows you to export raw packet bytes to a
binary file.
-----
Apply as Filter Analyze
Prepare and apply a display filter based on the currently se-
lected item. name.
Prepare a Filter Analyze
Prepare a display filter based on the currently selected
item.
Follow TCP Analyze
Stream Allows you to view all the data on a TCP stream between a
pair of nodes.
Follow SSL Analyze
Stream Same as "Follow TCP Stream" but for SSL. XXX - add a
new section describing this better.
-----
Wiki Protocol -
Page Show the wiki page corresponding to the currently selected
protocol in your web browser.
Filter Field Ref- -
erence Show the filter field reference web page corresponding to
the currently selected protocol in your web browser.
Protocol Prefer- -
ences... The menu item takes you to the properties dialog and se-
lects the page corresponding to the protocol if there are
106

menu's item:
properties associated with the highlighted field. More in-

formation on preferences can be found in Figure 9.8, “The
preferences dialog box”.
-----
Decode As... Analyze
Change or apply a new relation between two dissectors.
Resolve Name View
Causes a name resolution to be performed for the selected
packet, but NOT every packet in the capture.
Go to Corres- Go
ponding Packet If the selected field has a corresponding packet, go to it.
Corresponding packets will usually be a request/response
packet pair or such.
107
6.3. Filtering packets while viewing

Wireshark has two filtering languages: One used when capturing packets, and one used when dis-
playing packets. In this section we explore that second type of filter: Display filters. The first one
has already been dealt with in Section 4.8, “Filtering while capturing”.
Display filters allow you to concentrate on the packets you are interested in while hiding the cur-
rently uninteresting ones. They allow you to select packets by:
• Protocol
• The presence of a field
• The values of fields
• A comparison between fields
• ... and a lot more!
To select packets based on protocol type, simply type the protocol you are interested in in the Filter:
field in the filter toolbar of the Wireshark window and press enter to initiate the filter. Figure 6.5,
“Filtering on the TCP protocol” shows an example of what happens when you type tcp in the filter
field.
Note!
All protocol and field names are entered in lowercase. Also, don't forget to press enter
after entering the filter expression.
Figure 6.5. Filtering on the TCP protocol
108
As you might have noticed, only packets of the TCP protocol are displayed now (e.g. packets 1-10
are hidden). The packet numbering will remain as before, so the first packet shown is now packet
number 11.
Note!
When using a display filter, all packets remain in the capture file. The display filter
only changes the display of the capture file but not its content!
You can filter on any protocol that Wireshark understands. You can also filter on any field that a
dissector adds to the tree view, but only if the dissector has added an abbreviation for the field. A
list of such fields is available in Wireshark in the Add Expression... dialog box. You can find more
information on the Add Expression... dialog box in Section 6.5, “The "Filter Expression" dialog
box”.
For example, to narrow the packet list pane down to only those packets to or from the IP address
192.168.0.1, use ip.addr==192.168.0.1.
Note!
To remove the filter, click on the Clear button to the right of the filter field.
109
6.4. Building display filter expressions

Wireshark provides a simple but powerful display filter language that you can build quite complex
filter expressions with. You can compare values in packets as well as combine expressions into
more specific expressions. The following sections provide more information on doing this.
Tip!
You will find a lot of Display Filter examples at the Wireshark Wiki Display Filter
page at http://wiki.wireshark.org/DisplayFilters.
6.4.1. Display filter fields

Every field in the packet details pane can be used as a filter string, this will result in showing only
the packets where this field exists. For example: the filter string: tcp will show all packets contain-
ing the tcp protocol.
There is a complete list of all filter fields available through the menu item "Help/Supported Proto-
cols" in the page "Display Filter Fields" of the upcoming dialog.
XXX - add some more info here and a link to the statusbar info.
6.4.2. Comparing values

You can build display filters that compare values using a number of different comparison operators.
They are shown in Table 6.3, “Display Filter comparison operators”.
Tip!
You can use English and C-like terms in the same way, they can even be mixed in a
filter string!
Table 6.3. Display Filter comparison operators

English C-like Description and example
eq
== Equal
ip.addr==10.0.0.5
ne
!= Not equal
ip.addr!=10.0.0.5
gt
> Greater than
frame.pkt_len > 10
lt
< Less than
frame.pkt_len < 128
110

ge
>= Greater than or equal to
frame.pkt_len ge 0x100
le
<= Less than or equal to
frame.pkt_len <= 0x20
In addition, all protocol fields are typed. Table 6.4, “Display Filter Field Types” provides a list of
the types and example of how to express them.
Table 6.4. Display Filter Field Types

Type Example
Unsigned integer (8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit, 32-bit)
You can express integers in decimal, octal, or
hexadecimal. The following display filters are
equivalent:
ip.len le 1500
ip.len le 02734
ip.len le 0x436
Signed integer (8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit, 32-bit)

Boolean
A boolean field is present in the protocol decode
only if its value is true. For example,
tcp.flags.syn is present, and thus true, only if the
SYN flag is present in a TCP segment header.
Thus the filter expression tcp.flags.syn will se-

lect only those packets for which this flag exists,
that is, TCP segments where the segment header
contains the SYN flag. Similarly, to find source-
routed token ring packets, use a filter expression
of tr.sr.
Ethernet address (6 bytes)
Separators can be a colon (:), dot (.) or dash (-)
and can have one or two bytes between separat-
ors:
eth.addr == ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
eth.addr == ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff
eth.addr == ffff.ffff.ffff
IPv4 address ip.addr == 192.168.0.1

IPv6 address ipv6.addr == ::1
IPX address ipx.addr == 00000000.ffffffffffff
String (text) http.request.uri == "http://www.wireshark.org/"
6.4.3. Combining expressions
111
You can combine filter expressions in Wireshark using the logical operators shown in Table 6.5,
“Display Filter Logical Operations”
Table 6.5. Display Filter Logical Operations

and &&
Logical AND
ip.addr==10.0.0.5 and tcp.flags.fin
or ||
Logical OR
ip.addr==10.0.0.5 or ip.addr==192.1.1.1
xor ^^
Logical XOR
tr.dst[0:3] == 0.6.29 xor tr.src[0:3] == 0.6.29
not !
Logical NOT
not llc
[...]
Substring Operator
Wireshark allows you to select subsequences of a sequence in rather elab-

orate ways. After a label you can place a pair of brackets [] containing a
comma separated list of range specifiers.
eth.src[0:3] == 00:00:83
The example above uses the n:m format to specify a single range. In this
case n is the beginning offset and m is the length of the range being spe-
cified.
eth.src[1-2] == 00:83
The example above uses the n-m format to specify a single range. In this
case n is the beginning offset and m is the ending offset.
eth.src[:4] == 00:00:83:00
The example above uses the :m format, which takes everything from the
beginning of a sequence to offset m. It is equivalent to 0:m
eth.src[4:] == 20:20
The example above uses the n: format, which takes everything from offset
n to the end of the sequence.
112
eth.src[2] == 83
The example above uses the n format to specify a single range. In this case
the element in the sequence at offset n is selected. This is equivalent to
n:1.
eth.src[0:3,1-2,:4,4:,2] ==
00:00:83:00:83:00:00:83:00:20:20:83
Wireshark allows you to string together single ranges in a comma separ-

ated list to form compound ranges as shown above.
6.4.4. A common mistake

Warning!
Using the != operator on combined expressions like: eth.addr, ip.addr, tcp.port,
udp.port and alike will probably not work as expected!
Often people use a filter string to display something like ip.addr == 1.2.3.4 which will display all
packets containing the IP address 1.2.3.4.
Then they use ip.addr != 1.2.3.4 to see all packets not containing the IP address 1.2.3.4 in it. Unfor-
tunately, this does not do the expected.
Instead, that expression will even be true for packets where either source or destination IP address
equals 1.2.3.4. The reason for this, is that the expression ip.addr != 1.2.3.4 must be read as "the
packet contains a field named ip.addr with a value different from 1.2.3.4". As an IP datagram con-
tains both a source and a destination address, the expression will evaluate to true whenever at least
one of the two addresses differs from 1.2.3.4.
If you want to filter out all packets containing IP datagrams to or from IP address 1.2.3.4, then the
correct filter is !(ip.addr == 1.2.3.4) as it reads "show me all the packets for which it is not true that
a field named ip.addr exists with a value of 1.2.3.4", or in other words, "filter out all packets for
which there are no occurrences of a field named ip.addr with the value 1.2.3.4".
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6.5. The "Filter Expression" dialog box

When you are accustomed to Wireshark's filtering system and know what labels you wish to use in
your filters it can be very quick to simply type a filter string. However if you are new to Wireshark
or are working with a slightly unfamiliar protocol it can be very confusing to try to figure out what
to type. The Filter Expression dialog box helps with this.
Tip!
The "Filter Expression" dialog box is an excellent way to learn how to write Wireshark
display filter strings.
Figure 6.6. The "Filter Expression" dialog box
When you first bring up the Filter Expression dialog box you are shown a tree list of field names,
organized by protocol, and a box for selecting a relation.
Field Name Select a protocol field from the protocol field tree. Every protocol with filterable
fields is listed at the top level. By clicking on the "+" next to a protocol name you
can get a list of the field names available for filtering for that protocol.
Relation Select a relation from the list of available relation. The is present is a unary rela-
tion which is true if the selected field is present in a packet. All other listed rela-
tions are binary relations which require additional data (e.g. a Value to match) to
complete.
When you select a field from the field name list and select a binary relation (such as the equality re-
lation ==) you will be given the opportunity to enter a value, and possibly some range information.
114
Value You may enter an appropriate value in the Value text box. The Value
will also indicate the type of value for the field name you have selected
(like character string).
Predefined values Some of the protocol fields have predefined values available, much like
enum's in C. If the selected protocol field has such values defined, you
can choose one of them here.
Range XXX - add an explanation here!
OK When you have built a satisfactory expression click OK and a filter

string will be built for you.
Cancel You can leave the Add Expression... dialog box without any effect by
clicking the Cancel button.
115
6.6. Defining and saving filters

You can define filters with Wireshark and give them labels for later use. This can save time in re-
membering and retyping some of the more complex filters you use.
To define a new filter or edit an existing one, select the Capture Filters... menu item from the Cap-
ture menu or the Display Filters... menu item from the Analyze menu. Wireshark will then pop up
the Filters dialog as shown in Figure 6.7, “The "Capture Filters" and "Display Filters" dialog
boxes”.
Note!
The mechanisms for defining and saving capture filters and display filters are almost
identical. So both will be described here, differences between these two will be marked
as such.
Warning!
You must use Save to save your filters permanently. Ok or Apply will not save the fil-
ters, so they will be lost when you close Wireshark.
Figure 6.7. The "Capture Filters" and "Display Filters" dialog boxes
116
New This button adds a new filter to the list of filters. The currently entered
values from Filter name and Filter string will be used. If any of these
fields are empty, it will be set to "new".
Delete This button deletes the selected filter. It will be greyed out, if no filter is
selected.
Filter You can select a filter from this list (which will fill in the filter name
and filter string in the fields down the bottom of the dialog box).
Filter name: You can change the name of the currently selected filter here.
Note!
The filter name will only be used in this dialog to identify
the filter for your convenience, it will not be used else-
where. You can add multiple filters with the same name,
but this is not very useful.
Filter string: You can change the filter string of the currently selected filter here. Dis-
play Filter only: the string will be syntax checked while you are typing.
Add Expression... Display Filter only: This button brings up the Add Expression dialog
box which assists in building filter strings. You can find more informa-
tion about the Add Expression dialog in Section 6.5, “The "Filter Ex-
pression" dialog box”
OK Display Filter only: This button applies the selected filter to the current
display and closes the dialog.
Apply Display Filter only: This button applies the selected filter to the current
display, and keeps the dialog open.
Save Save the current settings in this dialog. The file location and format is
explained in Appendix A, Files and Folders.
Close Close this dialog. This will discard unsaved settings.
117
6.7. Finding packets

You can easily find packets once you have captured some packets or have read in a previously saved
capture file. Simply select the Find Packet... menu item from the Edit menu. Wireshark will pop up
the dialog box shown in Figure 6.8, “The "Find Packet" dialog box”.
6.7.1. The "Find Packet" dialog box
Figure 6.8. The "Find Packet" dialog box
You might first select the kind of thing to search for:
• Display filter
Simply enter a display filter string into the Filter: field, select a direction, and click on OK.
For example, to find the three way handshake for a connection from host 192.168.0.1, use the
following filter string:
ip.addr==192.168.0.1 and tcp.flags.syn
For more details on display filters, see Section 6.3, “Filtering packets while viewing”
• Hex Value
Search for a specific byte sequence in the packet data.
For example, use "00:00" to find the next packet including two null bytes in the packet data.
• String
Find a string in the packet data, with various options.
The value to be found will by syntax checked while you type it in. If the syntax check of your value
succeeded, the background of the entry field will turn green, if it fails, it will turn red.
118
You can choose the direction to be searched for:
• Up
Search upwards in the packet list (decreasing packet numbers).
• Down
Search downwards in the packet list (increasing packet numbers).
6.7.2. The "Find Next" command

"Find Next" will continue searching with the same options like in the last "Find Packet" run.
6.7.3. The "Find Previous" command

"Find Previous" will do the same thing as "Find Next", but with reverse search direction.
119
6.8. Go to a specific packet

You can easily jump to specific packets with one of the menu items in the Go menu.
6.8.1. The "Go Back" command

Go back in the packet history, works much like the page history in current web browsers.
6.8.2. The "Go Forward" command

Go forward in the packet history, works much like the page history in current web browsers.
6.8.3. The "Go to Packet" dialog box
Figure 6.9. The "Go To Packet" dialog box
This dialog box will let you enter a packet number. When you press OK, Wireshark will jump to
that packet.
6.8.4. The "Go to Corresponding Packet" command

If a protocol field is selected which points to another packet in the capture file, this command will
jump to that packet.
Note!
As these protocol fields now work like links (just as in your Web browser), it's easier
to simply double-click on the field to jump to the corresponding field.
6.8.5. The "Go to First Packet" command

This command will simply jump to the first packet displayed.
6.8.6. The "Go to Last Packet" command

This command will simply jump to the last packet displayed.
120
6.9. Marking packets

You can mark packets in the "Packet List" pane. A marked packet will be shown with black back-
ground, regardless of the coloring rules set. Marking a packet can be useful to find it later while ana-
lyzing in a large capture file.
Warning!
The packet marks are not stored in the capture file or anywhere else, so all packet
marks will be lost if you close the capture file.
You can use packet marking to control the output of packets when saving/exporting/printing. To do
so, an option in the packet range is available, see Section 5.8, “The Packet Range frame”.
There are three functions to manipulate the marked state of a packet:
• Mark packet (toggle) toggles the marked state of a single packet.
• Mark all packets set the mark state of all packets.
• Unmark all packets reset the mark state of all packets.
These mark function are available from the "Edit" menu, and the "Mark packet (toggle)" function is
also available from the pop-up menu of the "Packet List" pane.
121
6.10. Time display formats and time

references
While packets are captured, each packet is timestamped. These timestamps will be saved to the cap-
ture file, so they will be available for later analysis.
A detailed description of timestamps, timezones and alike can be found at: Section 7.3, “Time
Stamps”.
The timestamp presentation format and the precision in the packet list can be chosen using the View
menu, see Figure 3.5, “The "View" Menu”.
The available presentation formats are:
• Date and Time of Day: 1970-01-01 01:02:03.123456 The absolute date and time of the day
when the packet was captured.
• Time of Day: 01:02:03.123456 The absolute time of the day when the packet was captured.
• Seconds Since Beginning of Capture: 123.123456 The time relative to the start of the capture
file or the first "Time Reference" before this packet (see Section 6.10.1, “Packet time referen-
cing”).
• Seconds Since Previous Packet: 1.123456 The time relative to the previous packet.
The available precisions (aka. the number of displayed decimal places) are:
• Automatic The timestamp precision of the loaded capture file format will be used (the default).
• Seconds, Deciseconds, Centiseconds, Milliseconds, Microseconds or Nanoseconds The

timestamp precision will be forced to the given setting. If the actually available precision is
smaller, zeros will be appended. If the precision is larger, the remaining decimal places will be
cut off.
Precision example: If you have a timestamp and it's displayed using, "Seconds Since Previous Pack-
et", : the value might be 1.123456. This will be displayed using the "Automatic" setting for libpcap
files (which is microseconds). If you use Seconds it would show simply 1 and if you use Nano-
seconds it shows 1.123456000.
6.10.1. Packet time referencing

The user can set time references to packets. A time reference is the starting point for all subsequent
packet time calculations. It will be useful, if you want to see the time values relative to a special
packet, e.g. the start of a new request. It's possible to set multiple time references in the capture file.
Warning!
The time references will not be saved permanently and will be lost when you close the
capture file.
Note!
Time referencing will only be useful, if the time display format is set to "Seconds
Since Beginning of Capture". If one of the other time display formats are used, time
referencing will have no effect (and will make no sense either).
122
To work with time references, choose one of the "Time Reference" items in the "Edit" menu , see
Section 3.6, “The "Edit" menu”, or from the pop-up menu of the "Packet List" pane.
• Set Time Reference (toggle) Toggles the time reference state of the currently selected packet to
on or off.
• Find Next Find the next time referenced packet in the "Packet List" pane.
• Find Previous Find the previous time referenced packet in the "Packet List" pane.
Figure 6.10. Wireshark showing a time referenced packet
A time referenced packet will be marked with the string *REF* in the Time column (see packet
number 10). All subsequent packets will show the time since the last time reference.
123
124
Chapter 7. Advanced Topics
7.1. Introduction
In this chapter some of the advanced features of Wireshark will be described.
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Advanced Topics
7.2. Following TCP streams

If you are working with TCP based protocols it can be very helpful to see the data from a TCP
stream in the way that the application layer sees it. Perhaps you are looking for passwords in a Tel-
net stream, or you are trying to make sense of a data stream. Maybe you just need a display filter to
show only the packets of that TCP stream. If so, Wireshark's ability to follow a TCP stream will be
useful to you.
Simply select a TCP packet in the packet list of the stream/connection you are interested in and then
select the Follow TCP Stream menu item from the Wireshark Tools menu (or use the context menu
in the packet list). Wireshark will set an appropriate display filter and pop up a dialog box with all
the data from the TCP stream laid out in order, as shown in Figure 7.1, “The "Follow TCP Stream"
dialog box”.
Note!
It is worthwhile noting that Follow TCP Stream installs a display filter to select all the
packets in the TCP stream you have selected.
7.2.1. The "Follow TCP Stream" dialog box
Figure 7.1. The "Follow TCP Stream" dialog box
The stream content is displayed in the same sequence as it appeared on the network. Traffic from A
to B is marked in red, while traffic from B to A is marked in blue. If you like, you can change these
colors in the Edit/Preferences "Colors" page.
Non-printable characters will be replaced by dots. XXX - What about line wrapping (maximum line
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length) and CRNL conversions?
The stream content won't be updated while doing a live capture. To get the latest content you'll have
to reopen the dialog.
You can choose from the following actions:
1. Save As Save the stream data in the currently selected format.
2. Print Print the stream data in the currently selected format.
3. Direction Choose the stream direction to be displayed ("Entire conversation", "data from A to
B only" or "data from B to A only").
4. Filter out this stream Apply a display filter removing the current TCP stream data from the
display.
5. Close Close this dialog box, leaving the current display filter in effect.
You can choose to view the data in one of the following formats:
1. ASCII. In this view you see the data from each direction in ASCII. Obviously best for ASCII
based protocols, e.g. HTTP.
2. EBCDIC. For the big-iron freaks out there.
3. HEX Dump. This allows you to see all the data. This will require a lot of screen space and is
best used with binary protocols.
4. C Arrays. This allows you to import the stream data into your own C program.
5. Raw. This allows you to load the unaltered stream data into a different program for further ex-
amination. The display will look the same as the ASCII setting, but "Save As" will result in a
binary file.
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7.3. Time Stamps

Time stamps, their precisions and all that can be quite confusing. This section will provide you with
information about what's going on while Wireshark processes time stamps.
While packets are captured, each packet is time stamped as it comes in. These time stamps will be
saved to the capture file, so they also will be available for (later) analysis.
So where do these time stamps come from? While capturing, Wireshark gets the time stamps from
the libpcap (WinPcap) library, which in turn gets them from the operating system kernel. If the cap-
ture data is loaded from a capture file, Wireshark obviously gets the data from that file.
7.3.1. Wireshark internals

The internal format that Wireshark uses to keep a packet time stamp consists of the date (in days
since 1.1.1970) and the time of day (in nanoseconds since midnight). You can adjust the way Wire-
shark displays the time stamp data in the packet list, see the "Time Display Format" item in the Sec-
tion 3.7, “The "View" menu” for details.
While reading or writing capture files, Wireshark converts the time stamp data between the capture
file format and the internal format as required.
While capturing, Wireshark uses the libpcap (WinPcap) capture library which supports microsecond
resolution. Unless you are working with specialized capturing hardware, this resolution should be
adequate.
7.3.2. Capture file formats

Every capture file format that Wireshark knows support time stamps. The time stamp precision sup-
ported by a specific capture file format differs widely and varies from one second "0" to one nano-
second "0.123456789". Most file formats store the time stamps with a fixed precision (e.g. micro-
seconds), while some file formats are even capable to store the time stamp precision itself (whatever
the benefit may be).
The common libpcap capture file format that is used by Wireshark (and a lot of other tools) supports
a fixed microsecond resolution "0.123456" only.
Note!
Writing data into a capture file format that doesn't provide the capability to store the
actual precision will lead to loss of information. Example: If you load a capture file
with nanosecond resolution and store the capture data to a libpcap file (with micro-
second resolution) Wireshark obviously must reduce the precision from nanosecond to
microsecond.
7.3.3. Accuracy
It's often asked: "Which time stamp accuracy is provided by Wireshark?". Well, Wireshark doesn't
create any time stamps itself but simply gets them from "somewhere else" and displays them. So ac-
curacy will depend on the capture system (operating system, performance, ...) that you use. Because
of this, the above question is difficult to answer in a general way.
Note!
USB connected network adapters often provide a very bad time stamp accuracy. The
incoming packets have to take "a long and winding road" to travel through the USB
cable until they actually reach the kernel. As the incoming packets are time stamped
when they are processed by the kernel, this time stamping mechanism becomes very
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Advanced Topics
inaccurate.
Conclusion: don't use USB connected NIC's when you need precise time stamp accur-
acy! (XXX - are there any such NIC's that stamps already on the USB hardware?)
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7.4. Time Zones

If you travel across the planet, time zones can be confusing. If you get a capture file from some-
where around the world time zones can even be a lot more confusing ;-)
First of all, there are two reasons why you may not need to think about time zones at all:
• You are only interested in the time differences between the packet time stamps and don't need to
know the exact date and time of the captured packets (which is often the case).
• You don't get capture files from different time zones than your own, so there are simply no time
zone problems. For example: everyone in your team is working in the same time zone than your-
self.
What are time zones?
People expect that the time reflects the sunset. Dawn should be in the morning maybe around
06:00 and dusk in the evening maybe at 20:00. These times will obviously vary depending on
the season. It would be very confusing if everyone on earth would use the same global time as
this would correspond to the sunset only at a small part of the world.
For that reason, the earth is split into several different time zones, each zone with a local time
that corresponds to the local sunset.
The time zone's base time is UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) or Zulu Time (military and
aviation). The older term GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) shouldn't be used as it is slightly in-
correct (up to 0.9 seconds difference to UTC). The UTC base time equals to 0 (based at
Greenwich, England) and all time zones have an offset to UTC between -12 to +14 hours!
For example: If you live in Berlin you are in a time zone one hour earlier than UTC, so you
are in time zone "+1" (time difference in hours compared to UTC). If it's 3 o'clock in Berlin
it's 2 o'clock in UTC "at the same moment".
Be aware that at a few places on earth don't use time zones with even hour offsets (e.g. New
Delhi uses UTC+05:30)!
Further information can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone and ht-

tp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time.
What is daylight saving time (DST)?
Daylight Saving Time (DST), also known as Summer Time, is intended to "save" some day-
light during the summer months. To do this, a lot of countries (but not all!) add an DST hour
to the already existing UTC offset. So you may need to take another hour (or in very rare
cases even two hours!) difference into your "time zone calculations".
Unfortunately, the date at which DST actually takes effect is different throughout the world.
You may also note, that the northern and southern hemispheres have opposite DST's (e.g.
while it's summer in Europe it's winter in Australia).
Keep in mind: UTC remains the same all year around, regardless of DST!
Further information can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving.
Further time zone and DST information can be found at: http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/ and
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/.
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Advanced Topics
7.4.1. Set your computer's time correct!

If you work with people around the world, it's very helpful to set your computer's time and time
zone right.
You should set your computers time and time zone in the correct sequence:
1. Set your time zone to your current location
2. Set your computer's clock to the local time
This way you will tell your computer both the local time and also the time offset to UTC.
Tip!
If you travel around the world, it's an often made mistake to adjust the hours of your
computer clock to the local time. Don't adjust the hours but your time zone setting in-
stead! For your computer, the time is essentially the same as before, you are simply in
a different time zone with a different local time!
Tip!
You can use the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to automatically adjust your computer
to the correct time, by synchronizing it to Internet NTP clock servers. NTP clients are
available for all operating systems that Wireshark supports (and for a lot more), for ex-
amples see: http://www.ntp.org/.
7.4.2. Wireshark and Time Zones

So what's the relationship between Wireshark and time zones anyway?
Wireshark's native capture file format (libpcap format), and some other capture file formats, such as
the Windows Sniffer, EtherPeek, AiroPeek, and Sun snoop formats, save the arrival time of packets
as UTC values. UN*X systems, and "Windows NT based" systems (Windows NT 4.0, Windows
2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista) represent time internally as UTC.
When Wireshark is capturing, no conversion is necessary. However, if the system time zone is not
set correctly, the system's UTC time might not be correctly set even if the system clock appears to
display correct local time. "Windows 9x based" systems (Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me)
represent time internally as local time. When capturing, WinPcap has to convert the time to UTC be-
fore supplying it to Wireshark. If the system's time zone is not set correctly, that conversion will not
be done correctly.
Other capture file formats, such as the Microsoft Network Monitor, DOS-based Sniffer, and Net-
work Instruments Observer formats, save the arrival time of packets as local time values.
Internally to Wireshark, time stamps are represented in UTC; this means that, when reading capture
files that save the arrival time of packets as local time values, Wireshark must convert those local
time values to UTC values.
Wireshark in turn will display the time stamps always in local time. The displaying computer will
convert them from UTC to local time and displays this (local) time. For capture files saving the ar-
rival time of packets as UTC values, this means that the arrival time will be displayed as the local
time in your time zone, which might not be the same as the arrival time in the time zone in which
the packet was captured. For capture files saving the arrival time of packets as local time values, the
conversion to UTC will be done using your time zone's offset from UTC and DST rules, which
means the conversion will not be done correctly; the conversion back to local time for display might
undo this correctly, in which case the arrival time will be displayed as the arrival time in which the
packet was captured.
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Advanced Topics
Table 7.1. Time zone examples for UTC arrival times (without DST)
Los Angeles New York Madrid London Berlin Tokyo
Capture 10:00 10:00 10:00 10:00 10:00 10:00
File (UTC)
Local Offset -8 -5 -1 0 +1 +9
to UTC
Displayed 02:00 05:00 09:00 10:00 11:00 19:00
Time (Local
Time)
An example: Let's assume that someone in Los Angeles captured a packet with Wireshark at exactly
2 o'clock local time and sends you this capture file. The capture file's time stamp will be represented
in UTC as 10 o'clock. You are located in Berlin and will see 11 o'clock on your Wireshark display.
Now you have a phone call, video conference or Internet meeting with that one to talk about that
capture file. As you are both looking at the displayed time on your local computers, the one in Los
Angeles still sees 2 o'clock but you in Berlin will see 11 o'clock. The time displays are different as
both Wireshark displays will show the (different) local times at the same point in time.
Conclusion: You may not bother about the date/time of the time stamp you currently look at, unless
you must make sure that the date/time is as expected. So, if you get a capture file from a different
time zone and/or DST, you'll have to find out the time zone/DST difference between the two local
times and "mentally adjust" the time stamps accordingly. In any case, make sure that every com-
puter in question has the correct time and time zone setting.
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7.5. Packet Reassembling

7.5.1. What is it?
Network protocols often need to transport large chunks of data, which are complete in itself, e.g.
when transferring a file. The underlying protocol might not be able to handle that chunk size (e.g.
limitation of the network packet size), or is stream-based like TCP, which doesn't know data chunks
at all.
In that case the network protocol has to handle that chunk boundaries itself and (if required) spread-
ing the data over multiple packets. It obviously also needs a mechanism to find back the chunk
boundaries on the receiving side.
Tip!
Wireshark calls this mechanism reassembling, although a specific protocol specifica-
tion might use a different term for this (e.g. desegmentation, defragmentation, ...).
7.5.2. How Wireshark handles it

For some of the network protocols Wireshark knows of, a mechanism is implemented to find, de-
code and display these chunks of data. Wireshark will try to find the corresponding packets of this
chunk, and will show the combined data as additional pages in the "Packet Bytes" pane (for inform-
ation about this pane, see Section 3.17, “The "Packet Bytes" pane”).
Figure 7.2. The "Packet Bytes" pane with a reassembled tab
Note!
Reassembling might take place at several protocol layers, so it's possible that multiple
tabs in the "Packet Bytes" pane appear.
Note!
You will find the reassembled data in the last packet of the chunk.
An example: In a HTTP GET response, the requested data (e.g. a HTML page) is returned. Wire-
shark will show the hex dump of the data in a new tab "Uncompressed entity body" in the "Packet
Bytes" pane.
Reassembling is enabled in the preferences by default. The defaults were changed from disabled to
enabled in September 2005. If you created your preference settings before this date, you might look
if reassembling is actually enabled, as it can be extremely helpful while analyzing network packets.
The enabling or disabling of the reassemble settings of a protocol typically requires two things:
1. the lower level protocol (e.g., TCP) must support reassembly. Often this reassembly can be en-
abled or disabled via the protocol preferences.
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Advanced Topics
2. the higher level protocol (e.g., HTTP) must use the reassembly mechanism to reassemble frag-
mented protocol data. This too can often be enabled or disabled via the protocol preferences.
The tooltip of the higher level protocol setting will notify you if and which lower level protocol set-
ting has to be considered too.
134
Advanced Topics
7.6. Name Resolution

Name resolution tries to resolve some of the numerical address values into a human readable format.
There are two possible ways to do these conversations, depending on the resolution to be done: call-
ing system/network services (like the gethostname function) and/or evaluate from Wireshark specif-
ic configuration files. For details about the configuration files Wireshark uses for name resolution
and alike, see Appendix A, Files and Folders.
The name resolution feature can be en-/disabled separately for the protocol layers of the following
sections.
7.6.1. Name Resolution drawbacks

Name resolution can be invaluable while working with Wireshark and may even save you hours of
work. Unfortunately, it also has it's drawbacks.
• Name resolution will often fail. The name to be resolved might simply be unknown by the
name servers asked or the servers are just not available and the name is also not found in Wire-
shark's configuration files.
• The resolved names are not stored in the capture file or somewhere else. So the resolved
names might not be available if you open the capture file later or on a different machine. Each
time you open a capture file it may look "slightly different", maybe simply because you can't
connect to a name server (which you could connect before).
• DNS may add additional packets to your capture file. You may see packets to/from your ma-
chine in your capture file, which are caused by name resolution network services of the machine
Wireshark captures from. XXX - are there any other such packets than DNS ones?
• Resolved DNS names are cached by Wireshark. This is required for acceptable performance.
However, if the name resolution information should change while Wireshark is running, Wire-
shark won't notice a change to the name resolution information once it's get cached. If this in-
formation changes while Wireshark is running, e.g. a new DHCP lease takes effect, Wireshark
won't notice it. XXX - is this true for all or only for DNS info?
Tip!
The name resolution in the packet list is done while the list is filled. If a name could be
resolved after a packet was added to the list, that former entry won't be changed. As
the name resolution results are cached, you can use "View/Reload" to rebuild the pack-
et list, this time with the correctly resolved names. However, this isn't possible while a
capture is in progress.
7.6.2. Ethernet name resolution (MAC layer)

Try to resolve an Ethernet MAC address (e.g. 00:09:5b:01:02:03) to something more "human read-
able".
ARP name resolution (system service) Wireshark will ask the operating system to convert an Eth-
ernet address to the corresponding IP address (e.g. 00:09:5b:01:02:03 -> 192.168.0.1).
Ethernet codes (ethers file) If the ARP name resolution failed, Wireshark tries to convert the Eth-
ernet address to a known device name, which has been assigned by the user using an ethers file (e.g.
00:09:5b:01:02:03 -> homerouter).
Ethernet manufacturer codes (manuf file) If both ARP and ethers didn't returned a result, Wire-
shark tries to convert the first 3 bytes of an ethernet address to an abbreviated manufacturer name,
which has been assigned by the IEEE (e.g. 00:09:5b:01:02:03 -> Netgear_01:02:03).
135
Advanced Topics
7.6.3. IP name resolution (network layer)

Try to resolve an IP address (e.g. 216.239.37.99) to something more "human readable".
DNS/ADNS name resolution (system/library service) Wireshark will ask the operating system (or
the ADNS library), to convert an IP address to the hostname associated with it (e.g. 216.239.37.99 -
> www.1.google.com). The DNS service is using synchronous calls to the DNS server. So Wire-
shark will stop responding until a response to a DNS request is returned. If possible, you might con-
sider using the ADNS library (which won't wait for a network response).
Warning!
Enabling network name resolution when your name server is unavailable may signific-
antly slow down Wireshark while it waits for all of the name server requests to time
out. Use ADNS in that case.
DNS vs. ADNS here's a short comparison: Both mechanisms are used to convert an IP address to
some human readable (domain) name. The usual DNS call gethostname() will try to convert the ad-
dress to a name. To do this, it will first ask the systems hosts file (e.g. /etc/hosts) if it finds a match-
ing entry. If that fails, it will ask the configured DNS server(s) about the name.
So the real difference between DNS and ADNS comes when the system has to wait for the DNS
server about a name resolution. The system call gethostname() will wait until a name is resolved or
an error occurs. If the DNS server is unavailable, this might take quite a while (several seconds).
The ADNS service will work a bit differently. It will also ask the DNS server, but it won't wait for
the answer. It will just return to Wireshark in a very short amount of time. The actual (and the fol-
lowing) address fields won't show the resolved name until the ADNS call returned. As mentioned
above, the values get cached, so you can use View/Reload to "update" these fields to show the re-
solved values.
hosts name resolution (hosts file) If DNS name resolution failed, Wireshark will try to convert an
IP address to the hostname associated with it, using a hosts file provided by the user (e.g.
216.239.37.99 -> www.google.com).
7.6.4. IPX name resolution (network layer)

ipxnet name resolution (ipxnets file) XXX - add ipxnets name resolution explanation.
7.6.5. TCP/UDP port name resolution (transport layer)

Try to resolve a TCP/UDP port (e.g. 80) to something more "human readable".
TCP/UDP port conversion (system service) Wireshark will ask the operating system to convert a
TCP or UDP port to its well known name (e.g. 80 -> http).
XXX - mention the role of the /etc/services file (but don't forget the files and folders section)!
136
Advanced Topics
7.7. Checksums
Several network protocols use checksums to ensure data integrity.
Tip!
Applying checksums as described here is also known as redundancy check.
What are checksums for?
Checksums are used to ensure the integrity of data portions for data transmission or storage.
A checksum is basically a calculated summary of such a data portion.
Network data transmissions often produce errors, such as toggled, missing or duplicated bits.
As a result, the data received might not be identical to the data transmitted, which is obvi-
ously a bad thing.
Because of these transmission errors, network protocols very often use checksums to detect
such errors. The transmitter will calculate a checksum of the data and transmits the data to-
gether with the checksum. The receiver will calculate the checksum of the received data with
the same algorithm as the transmitter. If the received and calculated checksums don't match a
transmission error has occurred.
Some checksum algorithms are able to recover (simple) errors by calculating where the ex-
pected error must be and repairing it.
If there are errors that cannot be recovered, the receiving side throws away the packet. De-
pending on the network protocol, this data loss is simply ignored or the sending side needs to
detect this loss somehow and retransmits the required packet(s).
Using a checksum drastically reduces the number of undetected transmission errors.

However, the usual checksum algorithms cannot guarantee an error detection of 100%, so a
very small number of transmission errors may remain undetected.
There are several different kinds of checksum algorithms, an example of an often used check-
sum algorithm is CRC32. The checksum algorithm actually chosen for a specific network
protocol will depend on the expected error rate of the network medium, the importance of er-
ror detection, the processor load to perform the calculation, the performance needed and
many other things.
Further information about checksums can be found at: http:/ / en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/
Checksum.
7.7.1. Wireshark checksum validation

Wireshark will validate the checksums of several protocols, e.g.: IP, TCP, ...
It will do the same calculation as a "normal receiver" would do, and shows the checksum fields in
the packet details with a comment, e.g.: [correct], [invalid, must be 0x12345678] or alike.
Checksum validation can be switched off for various protocols in the Wireshark protocol prefer-
ences, e.g. to (very slightly) increase performance.
If the checksum validation is enabled and it detected an invalid checksum, features like packet reas-
sembling won't be processed. This is avoided as incorrect connection data could "confuse" the in-
ternal database.
137
Advanced Topics
7.7.2. Checksum offloading

The checksum calculation might be done by the network driver, protocol driver or even in hardware.
For example: The Ethernet transmitting hardware calculates the Ethernet CRC32 checksum and the
receiving hardware validates this checksum. If the received checksum is wrong Wireshark won't
even see the packet, as the Ethernet hardware internally throws away the packet.
Higher level checksums are "traditionally" calculated by the protocol implementation and the com-
pleted packet is then handed over to the hardware.
Recent network hardware can perform advanced features such as IP checksum calculation, also
known as checksum offloading. The network driver won't calculate the checksum itself but simply
hand over an empty (zero or garbage filled) checksum field to the hardware.
Note!
Checksum offloading often causes confusion as the network packets to be transmitted
are handed over to Wireshark before the checksums are actually calculated. Wireshark
gets these "empty" checksums and displays them as invalid, even though the packets
will contain valid checksums when they leave the network hardware later.
Checksum offloading can be confusing and having a lot of [invalid] messages on the screen can be
quite annoying. As mentioned above, invalid checksums may lead to unreassembled packets, mak-
ing the analysis of the packet data much harder.
You can do two things to avoid this checksum offloading problem:
• Turn off the checksum offloading in the network driver, if this option is available.
• Turn off checksum validation of the specific protocol in the Wireshark preferences.
138
Advanced Topics
139
Chapter 8. Statistics
8.1. Introduction
Wireshark provides a wide range of network statistics.
These statistics range from general information about the loaded capture file (like the number of
captured packets), to statistics about specific protocols (e.g. statistics about the number of HTTP re-
quests and responses captured).
• General statistics:
• Summary about the capture file.
• Protocol Hierarchy of the captured packets.
• Endpoints e.g. traffic to and from an IP addresses.
• Conversations e.g. traffic between specific IP addresses.
• IO Graphs visualizing the number of packets (or similar) in time.
• Protocol specific statistics:
• Service Response Time between request and response of some protocols.
• Various other protocol specific statistics.
Note!
The protocol specific statistics requires detailed knowledge about the specific protocol.
Unless you are familiar with that protocol, statistics about it will be pretty hard to un-
derstand.
140
Statistics
8.2. The "Summary" window

General statistics about the current capture file.
Figure 8.1. The "Summary" window
141
Statistics
• File general information about the capture file.
• Time the timestamps when the first and the last packet were capturing (and the time between
them).
• Capture information from the time when the capture was done (only available if the packet data
was captured from the network and not loaded from a file).
• Display some display related information.
• Traffic some statistics of the network traffic seen. If a display filter is set, you will see values in
both columns. The values in the Captured column will remain the same as before, while the
values in the Displayed column will reflect the values corresponding to the packets shown in the
display.
142
Statistics
8.3. The "Protocol Hierarchy" window

The protocol hierarchy of the captured packets.
Figure 8.2. The "Protocol Hierarchy" window
This is a tree of all the protocols in the capture. You can collapse or expand subtrees, by clicking on
the plus / minus icons. By default, all trees are expanded.
Each row contains the statistical values of one protocol.
The following columns containing the statistical values are available:
• Protocol this protocol's name
• % Packets the percentage of protocol packets, relative to all packets in the capture
• Packets the absolute number of packets of this protocol
• Bytes the absolute number of bytes of this protocol
• MBit/s the bandwidth of this protocol, relative to the capture time
• End Packets the absolute number of packets of this protocol (where this protocol were the
highest protocol to decode)
• End Bytes the absolute number of bytes of this protocol (where this protocol were the highest
protocol to decode)
• End MBit/s the bandwidth of this protocol, relative to the capture time (where this protocol
were the highest protocol to decode)
143
Statistics
Note!
Packets will usually contain multiple protocols, so more than one protocol will be
counted for each packet. Example: In the screenshot IP has 99,17% and TCP 85,83%
(which is together much more than 100%).
Note!
Protocol layers can consist of packets that won't contain any higher layer protocol, so
the sum of all higher layer packets may not sum up to the protocols packet count. Ex-
ample: In the screenshot TCP has 85,83% but the sum of the subprotocols (HTTP, ...)
is much less. This may be caused by TCP protocol overhead, e.g. TCP ACK packets
won't be counted as packets of the higher layer).
Note!
A single packet can contain the same protocol more than once. In this case, the pro-
tocol is counted more than once. For example: in some tunneling configurations the IP
layer can appear twice.
144
Statistics
8.4. Endpoints
Statistics of the endpoints captured.
Tip!
If you are looking for a feature other network tools call a hostlist, here is the right
place to look. The list of Ethernet or IP endpoints is usually what you're looking for.
8.4.1. What is an Endpoint?

A network endpoint is the logical endpoint of separate protocol traffic of a specific protocol layer.
The endpoint statistics of Wireshark will take the following endpoints into account:
• Ethernet an Ethernet endpoint is identical to the Ethernet's MAC address.
• Fibre Channel XXX - insert info here.
• FDDI a FDDI endpoint is identical to the FDDI MAC address.
• IPv4 an IP endpoint is identical to its IP address.
• IPX XXX - insert info here.
• TCP a TCP endpoint is a combination of the IP address and the TCP port used, so different TCP
ports on the same IP address are different TCP endpoints.
• Token Ring a Token Ring endpoint is identical to the Token Ring MAC address.
• UDP a UDP endpoint is a combination of the IP address and the UDP port used, so different
UDP ports on the same IP address are different UDP endpoints.
Broadcast / multicast endpoints

Broadcast / multicast traffic will be shown separately as additional endpoints. Of
course, as these endpoints are virtual endpoints, the real traffic will be received by all
(multicast: some) of the listed unicast endpoints.
8.4.2. The "Endpoints" window

This window shows statistics about the endpoints captured.
Figure 8.3. The "Endpoints" window
145
Statistics
For each supported protocol, a tab is shown in this window. The tab labels shows the number of en-
dpoints captured (e.g. the tab label "Ethernet: 5" tells you that five ethernet endpoints have been
captured). If no endpoints of a specific protocol were captured, the tab label will be grayed out
(although the related page can still be selected).
Each row in the list shows the statistical values for exactly one endpoint.
Name resolution will be done if selected in the window and if it is active for the specific protocol
layer (MAC layer for the selected Ethernet endpoints page). As you might have noticed, the first
row has a name resolution of the first three bytes "Netgear", the second row's address was resolved
to an IP address (using ARP) and the third was resolved to a broadcast (unresolved this would still
be: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff), the last two Ethernet addresses remain unresolved.
Tip!
This window will be updated frequently, so it will be useful, even if you open it before
(or while) you are doing a live capture.
8.4.3. The protocol specific "Endpoint List" windows

Before the combined window described above was available, each of its pages were shown as separ-
ate windows. Even though the combined window is much more convenient to use, these separate
windows are still available. The main reason is, they might process faster for very large capture
files. However, as the functionality is exactly the same as in the combined window, they won't be
discussed in detail here.
146
Statistics
8.5. Conversations
Statistics of the captured conversations.
8.5.1. What is a Conversation?

A network conversation is the traffic between two specific endpoints. For example, an IP conversa-
tion is all the traffic between two IP addresses. The description of the known endpoint types can be
found in Section 8.4.1, “What is an Endpoint?”.
8.5.2. The "Conversations" window

Beside the list content, the conversations window work the same way as the endpoint ones, see Sec-
tion 8.4.2, “The "Endpoints" window” for a description how it works.
Figure 8.4. The "Conversations" window
8.5.3. The protocol specific "Conversation List"

windows
Before the combined window described above was available, each of its pages were shown as separ-
ate windows. Even though the combined window is much more convenient to use, these separate
windows are still available. The main reason is, they might process faster for very large capture
files. However, as the functionality is exactly the same as in the combined window, they won't be
discussed in detail here.
147
Statistics
8.6. The "IO Graphs" window

User configurable graph of the captured network packets.
You can define up to five differently colored graphs.
Figure 8.5. The "IO Graphs" window
The user can configure the following things:
• Graphs
• Graph 1-5 enable the graph 1-5 (only graph 1 is enabled by default)
• Color the color of the graph (cannot be changed)
• Filter: a display filter for this graph (only the packets that pass this filter will be taken into
account for that graph)
• Style: the style of the graph (Line/Impulse/FBar)
• X Axis
• Tick interval an interval in x direction lasts (10/1/0.1/0.01/0.001 seconds)
• Pixels per tick use 10/5/2/1 pixels per tick interval
• Y Axis
148
Statistics
• Unit the unit for the y direction (Packets/Tick, Bytes/Tick, Advanced...)
• Scale the scale for the y unit (10,20,50,100,200,500,...)
XXX - describe the Advanced feature.
149
Statistics
8.7. Service Response Time

The service response time is the time between a request and the corresponding response. This in-
formation is available for many protocols.
Service response time statistics are currently available for the following protocols:
• DCE-RPC
• Fibre Channel
• H.225 RAS
• LDAP
• MGCP
• ONC-RPC
• SMB
As an example, the DCE-RPC service response time is described in more detail.
Note!
The other Service Response Time windows will work the same way (or only slightly
different) compared to the following description.
8.7.1. The "Service Response Time DCE-RPC" window

The service response time of DCE-RPC is the time between the request and the corresponding re-
sponse.
First of all, you have to select the DCE-RPC interface:
Figure 8.6. The "Compute DCE-RPC statistics" window
You can optionally set a display filter, to reduce the amount of packets.
150
Statistics
Figure 8.7. The "DCE-RPC Statistic for ..." window
Each row corresponds to a method of the interface selected (so the EPM interface in version 3 has 7
methods). For each method the number of calls, and the statistics of the SRT time is calculated.
151
Statistics
8.8. The protocol specific statistics windows

The protocol specific statistics windows display detailed information of specific protocols and might
be described in a later version of this document.
Some of these statistics are described at the http://wiki.wireshark.org/Statistics pages.
152
Statistics
153
Chapter 9. Customizing Wireshark
9.1. Introduction
Wireshark's default behaviour will usually suit your needs pretty well. However, as you become
more familiar with Wireshark, it can be customized in various ways to suit your needs even better.
In this chapter we explore:
• How to start Wireshark with command line parameters
• How to colorize the packet list
• How to control protocol dissection
• How to use the various preference settings
154
Customizing Wireshark
9.2. Start Wireshark from the command line

You can start Wireshark from the command line, but it can also be started from most Window man-
agers as well. In this section we will look at starting it from the command line.
Wireshark supports a large number of command line parameters. To see what they are, simply enter
the command wireshark -h and the help information shown in Example 9.1, “Help information
available from Wireshark” (or something similar) should be printed.
Example 9.1. Help information available from Wireshark
Version 0.99.0
Copyright 1998-2006 Gerald Combs <gerald@wireshark.org> and contributors.
Compiled with GTK+ 2.6.9, with GLib 2.6.6, with WinPcap (version unknown),
with libz 1.2.3, with libpcre 6.4, with Net-SNMP 5.2.2, with ADNS, with Lua 5.1.
Running with WinPcap version 3.1 (packet.dll version 3, 1, 0, 27), based on
libpcap version 0.9[.x] on Windows XP Service Pack 2, build 2600.
wireshark [ -vh ] [ -DklLnpQS ] [ -a <capture autostop condition> ] ...
[ -b <capture ring buffer option> ] ...
[ -B <capture buffer size> ]
[ -c <capture packet count> ] [ -f <capture filter> ]
[ -g <packet number> ] [ -i <capture interface> ] [ -m <font> ]
[ -N <name resolving flags> ] [ -o <preference/recent setting> ] ...
[ -r <infile> ] [ -R <read (display) filter> ] [ -s <capture snaplen> ]
[ -t <time stamp format> ] [ -w <savefile> ] [ -y <capture link type> ]
[ -X <eXtension option> ] [ -z <statistics> ] [ <infile> ]
We will examine each of the command line options in turn.
The first thing to notice is that issuing the command wireshark by itself will bring up Wireshark.
However, you can include as many of the command line parameters as you like. Their meanings are
as follows ( in alphabetical order ): XXX - is the alphabetical order a good choice? Maybe better
task based?
-a <capture autostop condition> Specify a criterion that specifies when Wireshark is to stop
writing to a capture file. The criterion is of the form
test:value, where test is one of:
duration:value Stop writing to a capture file after

value of seconds have elapsed.
filesize:value Stop writing to a capture file after it

reaches a size of value kilobytes
(where a kilobyte is 1000 bytes, not
1024 bytes). If this option is used to-
gether with the -b option, Wireshark
will stop writing to the current capture
file and switch to the next one if files-
ize is reached.
files:value Stop writing to capture files after

value number of files were written.
-b <capture ring buffer option> If a maximum capture file size was specified, cause Wire-
shark to run in "ring buffer" mode, with the specified number
of files. In "ring buffer" mode, Wireshark will write to several
capture files. Their name is based on the number of the file
and on the creation date and time.
When the first capture file fills up, Wireshark will switch to
155
writing to the next file, until it fills up the last file, at which
point it'll discard the data in the first file (unless 0 is spe-
cified, in which case, the number of files is unlimited) and
start writing to that file and so on.
If the optional duration is specified, Wireshark will switch

also to the next file when the specified number of seconds has
elapsed even if the current file is not completely fills up.
duration:value Switch to the next file after value

seconds have elapsed, even if the cur-
rent file is not completely filled up.
filesize:value Switch to the next file after it reaches

a size of value kilobytes (where a kilo-
byte is 1000 bytes, not 1024 bytes).
files:value Begin again with the first file after

value number of files were written
(form a ring buffer).
-B <capture buffer size (Win32 Win32 only: set capture buffer size (in MB, default is 1MB).
only)> This is used by the the capture driver to buffer packet data un-
til that data can be written to disk. If you encounter packet
drops while capturing, try to increase this size.
-c <capture packet count> This option specifies the maximum number of packets to cap-
ture when capturing live data. It would be used in conjunction
with the -k option.
-D Print a list of the interfaces on which Wireshark can capture,

and exit. For each network interface, a number and an inter-
face name, possibly followed by a text description of the in-
terface, is printed. The interface name or the number can be
supplied to the -i flag to specify an interface on which to cap-
ture.
This can be useful on systems that don't have a command to

list them (e.g., Windows systems, or UNIX systems lacking
ifconfig -a); the number can be useful on Windows 2000 and
later systems, where the interface name is a somewhat com-
plex string.
Note that "can capture" means that Wireshark was able to

open that device to do a live capture; if, on your system, a
program doing a network capture must be run from an ac-
count with special privileges (for example, as root), then, if
Wireshark is run with the -D flag and is not run from such an
account, it will not list any interfaces.
-f <capture filter> This option sets the initial capture filter expression to be used
when capturing packets.
-g <packet number> After reading in a capture file using the -r flag, go to the giv-
en packet number.
-h The -h option requests Wireshark to print its version and us-

age instructions (as shown above) and exit.
-i <capture interface> Set the name of the network interface or pipe to use for live
packet capture.
156
Network interface names should match one of the names lis-

ted in wireshark -D (described above); a number, as reported
by wireshark -D, can also be used. If you're using UNIX,
netstat -i or ifconfig -a might also work to list interface
names, although not all versions of UNIX support the -a flag
to ifconfig.
If no interface is specified, Wireshark searches the list of in-

terfaces, choosing the first non-loopback interface if there are
any non-loopback interfaces, and choosing the first loopback
interface if there are no non-loopback interfaces; if there are
no interfaces, Wireshark reports an error and doesn't start the
capture.
Pipe names should be either the name of a FIFO (named pipe)

or ``-'' to read data from the standard input. Data read from
pipes must be in standard libpcap format.
-k The -k option specifies that Wireshark should start capturing

packets immediately. This option requires the use of the -i
parameter to specify the interface that packet capture will oc-
cur from.
-l This option turns on automatic scrolling if the packet list pane

is being updated automatically as packets arrive during a cap-
ture ( as specified by the -S flag).
-L List the data link types supported by the interface and exit.
-m <font> This option sets the name of the font used for most text dis-
played by Wireshark. XXX - add an example!
-n Disable network object name resolution (such as hostname,

TCP and UDP port names).
-N <name resolving flags> Turns on name resolving for particular types of addresses and
port numbers; the argument is a string that may contain the
letters m to enable MAC address resolution, n to enable net-
work address resolution, and t to enable transport-layer port
number resolution. This overrides -n if both -N and -n are
present. The letter C enables concurrent (asynchronous) DNS
lookups.
-o <preference/recent settings> Sets a preference or recent value, overriding the default value
and any value read from a preference/recent file. The argu-
ment to the flag is a string of the form prefname:value, where
prefname is the name of the preference (which is the same
name that would appear in the preference/recent file), and
value is the value to which it should be set. Multiple instances
of -o <preference settings> can be given on a single com-
mand line.
An example of setting a single preference would be:
wireshark -o mgcp.display_dissect_tree:TRUE
An example of setting multiple preferences would be:
wireshark -o mgcp.display_dissect_tree:TRUE -o
mgcp.udp.callagent_port:2627
157
Tip!
You can get a list of all available preference
strings from the preferences file, see Ap-
pendix A, Files and Folders.
-p Don't put the interface into promiscuous mode. Note that the
interface might be in promiscuous mode for some other reas-
on; hence, -p cannot be used to ensure that the only traffic
that is captured is traffic sent to or from the machine on
which Wireshark is running, broadcast traffic, and multicast
traffic to addresses received by that machine.
-Q This option forces Wireshark to exit when capturing is com-

plete. It can be used with the -c option. It must be used in
conjunction with the -i and -w options.
-r <infile> This option provides the name of a capture file for Wireshark
to read and display. This capture file can be in one of the
formats Wireshark understands.
-R <read (display) filter> This option specifies a display filter to be applied when read-
ing packets from a capture file. The syntax of this filter is that
of the display filters discussed in Section 6.3, “Filtering pack-
ets while viewing”. Packets not matching the filter are dis-
carded.
-s <capture snaplen> This option specifies the snapshot length to use when captur-
ing packets. Wireshark will only capture <snaplen> bytes of
data for each packet.
-S This option specifies that Wireshark will display packets as it

captures them. This is done by capturing in one process and
displaying them in a separate process. This is the same as "Up-
date list of packets in real time" in the Capture Options dialog
box.
-t <time stamp format> This option sets the format of packet timestamps that are dis-
played in the packet list window. The format can be one of:
• r relative, which specifies timestamps are displayed relat-

ive to the first packet captured.
• a absolute, which specifies that actual times be displayed

for all packets.
• ad absolute with date, which specifies that actual dates

and times be displayed for all packets.
• d delta, which specifies that timestamps are relative to the

previous packet.
• e epoch, which specifies that timestamps are seconds

since epoch (Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00)
-v The -v option requests Wireshark to print out its version in-

formation and exit.
-w <savefile> This option sets the name of the savefile to be used when sav-
ing a capture file.
158
-y <capture link type> If a capture is started from the command line with -k, set the
data link type to use while capturing packets. The values re-
ported by -L are the values that can be used.
-X <eXtension option> Specify an option to be passed to a TShark module. The eX-

tension option is in the form extension_key:value, where ex-
tension_key can be:
lua_script:lua_script_filename Tell Wireshark to load the

given script in addition to the default Lua scripts.
-z <statistics-string> Get Wireshark to collect various types of statistics and dis-

play the result in a window that updates in semi-real time.
XXX - add more details here!
159
9.3. Packet colorization

A very useful mechanism available in Wireshark is packet colorization. You can set-up Wireshark
so that it will colorize packets according to a filter. This allows you to emphasize the packets you
are usually interested in.
Tip!
You will find a lot of Coloring Rule examples at the Wireshark Wiki Coloring Rules
page at http://wiki.wireshark.org/ColoringRules.
To colorize packets, select the Coloring Rules... menu item from the View menu, Wireshark will
pop up the "Coloring Rules" dialog box as shown in Figure 9.1, “The "Coloring Rules" dialog box”.
Figure 9.1. The "Coloring Rules" dialog box
Once the Coloring Rules dialog box is up, there are a number of buttons you can use, depending on
whether or not you have any color filters installed already.
Note!
You will need to carefully select the order the coloring rules are listed (and thus ap-
plied) as they are applied in order from top to bottom. So, more specific rules need to
be listed before more general rules. For example, if you have a color rule for UDP be-
fore the one for DNS, the color rule for DNS will never be applied (as DNS uses UDP,
so the UDP rule will be matching first).
If this is the first time you have used Coloring Rules, click on the New button which will bring up
the Edit color filter dialog box as shown in Figure 9.2, “The "Edit Color Filter" dialog box”.
Figure 9.2. The "Edit Color Filter" dialog box
160
In the Edit Color dialog box, simply enter a name for the color filter, and enter a filter string in the
Filter text field. Figure 9.2, “The "Edit Color Filter" dialog box” shows the values arp and arp
which means that the name of the color filter is arp and the filter will select protocols of type arp.
Once you have entered these values, you can choose a foreground and background color for packets
that match the filter expression. Click on Foreground color... or Background color... to achieve
this and Wireshark will pop up the Choose foreground/background color for protocol dialog box as
shown in Figure 9.3, “The "Choose color" dialog box”.
Figure 9.3. The "Choose color" dialog box
Select the color you desire for the selected packets and click on OK.
Note!
You must select a color in the colorbar next to the colorwheel to load values into the
RGB values. Alternatively, you can set the values to select the color you want.
161
Figure 9.4, “Using color filters with Wireshark” shows an example of several color filters being
used in Wireshark. You may not like the color choices, however, feel free to choose your own.
If you are uncertain which coloring rule actually took place for a specific packet, have a look at the
[Coloring Rule Name: ...] and [Coloring Rule String: ...] fields.
Figure 9.4. Using color filters with Wireshark
162
9.4. Control Protocol dissection

The user can control how protocols are dissected.
Each protocol has its own dissector, so dissecting a complete packet will typically involve several
dissectors. As Wireshark tries to find the right dissector for each packet (using static "routes" and
heuristics "guessing"), it might choose the wrong dissector in your specific case. For example, Wire-
shark won't know if you use a common protocol on an uncommon TCP port, e.g. using HTTP on
TCP port 800 instead of the standard port 80.
There are two ways to control the relations between protocol dissectors: disable a protocol dissector
completely or temporarily divert the way Wireshark calls the dissectors.
9.4.1. The "Enabled Protocols" dialog box

The Enabled Protocols dialog box lets you enable or disable specific protocols, all protocols are en-
abled by default. When a protocol is disabled, Wireshark stops processing a packet whenever that
protocol is encountered.
Note!
Disabling a protocol will prevent information about higher-layer protocols from being
displayed. For example, suppose you disabled the IP protocol and selected a packet
containing Ethernet, IP, TCP, and HTTP information. The Ethernet information would
be displayed, but the IP, TCP and HTTP information would not - disabling IP would
prevent it and the other protocols from being displayed.
Figure 9.5. The "Enabled Protocols" dialog box
163
To disable or enable a protocol, simply click on it using the mouse or press the space bar when the
protocol is highlighted.
Warning!
You have to use the Save button to save your settings. The OK or Apply buttons will
not save your changes permanently, so they will be lost when Wireshark is closed.
You can choose from the following actions:
1. Enable All Enable all protocols in the list.
2. Disable All Disable all protocols in the list.
3. Invert Toggle the state of all protocols in the list.
4. OK Apply the changes and close the dialog box.
164
5. Apply Apply the changes and keep the dialog box open.
6. Save Save the settings to the disabled_protos, see Appendix A, Files and Folders for details.
7. Cancel Cancel the changes and close the dialog box.
9.4.2. User Specified Decodes

The "Decode As" functionality let you temporarily divert specific protocol dissections. This might
be useful for example, if you do some uncommon experiments on your network.
Figure 9.6. The "Decode As" dialog box
The content of this dialog box depends on the selected packet when it was opened.
Warning!
The user specified decodes can not be saved. If you quit Wireshark, these settings will
be lost.
1. Decode Decode packets the selected way.
2. Do not decode Do not decode packets the selected way.
3. Link/Network/Transport Specify the network layer at which "Decode As" should take place.
Which of these pages are available, depends on the content of the selected packet when this
dialog box was opened.
4. Show Current Open a dialog box showing the current list of user specified decodes.
165
5. OK Apply the currently selected decode and close the dialog box.
6. Apply Apply the currently selected decode and keep the dialog box open.
7. Cancel Cancel the changes and close the dialog box.
9.4.3. Show User Specified Decodes

This dialog box shows the currently active user specified decodes.
Figure 9.7. The "Decode As: Show" dialog box
1. OK Close this dialog box.
2. Clear Removes all user specified decodes.
166
9.5. Preferences
There are a number of preferences you can set. Simply select the Preferences... menu item from the
Edit menu, and Wireshark will pop up the Preferences dialog box as shown in Figure 9.8, “The pref-
erences dialog box”, with the "User Interface" page as default. On the left side is a tree where you
can select the page to be shown.
Note!
Preference settings are added frequently. For a recent explanation of the preference
pages and their settings have a look at the Wireshark Wiki Preferences page at ht-
tp://wiki.wireshark.org/Preferences.
Warning!
The OK or Apply button will not save the preference settings, you'll have to save the
settings by clicking the Save button.
• The OK button will apply the preferences settings and close the dialog.
• The Apply button will apply the preferences settings and keep the dialog open.
• The Save button will apply the preferences settings, save the settings on the hard disk and keep
the dialog open.
• The Cancel button will restore all preferences settings to the last saved state.
Figure 9.8. The preferences dialog box
167
9.6. User Table

The User Table editor is used for managing various tables in wireshark. It's main dialog works very
similarly to that of Section 9.3, “Packet colorization”.
168
9.7. Display Filter Macros

Display Filter Macos are a mechanism to create shortcuts for complex filters. For example defining
a display filter macro named tcp_conv whose text is ( (ip.src == $1and ip.dst == $2 and tcp.srcpt
== $3 and tcp.dstpt == $4) or (ip.src == $2and ip.dst == $1 and tcp.srcpt == $4 and tcp.dstpt
== $3) ) would allow to use a display filter like ${tcp_conv:10.1.1.2;10.1.1.3;1200;1400} instead of
typing the whole filter.
Display Filter Macos can be managed with a Section 9.6, “User Table” selecting the Display Filter
Macros menu item from the View Menu. The User Table has the following fields
name the name of the macro.
text the replacement text for the macro it uses $1, $2, $3, ... as the input arguments.
169
9.8. Tektronics K12xx/15 RF5 protocols Table

The Tektronix's K12xx/15 rf5 file format uses helper files (*.stk) to identify the various protocols
that are used by a certain interface. Wireshark doesn't read these stk files, it uses a table that helps it
identify which lowest layer protocol to use.
Stk file to protocol matching is handled by an Section 9.6, “User Table” with the following fields.
match a partial match for an stk filename, the first match wins, so if you have a specific case
and a general one the specific one must appear first in the list.
protos This is the name of the encapsulating protocol (the lowest layer in the packet data) it can
be either just the name of the protocol (e.g. mtp2, eth_witoutfcs, sscf-nni ) or the name
of the encapsulation protocol and the "application" protocol over it separated by a colon
(e.g sscop:sscf-nni, sscop:alcap, sscop:nbap, ...)
170
9.9. User DLTs protocol table

When a pcap file uses one of the user DLTs (147 to 162) wireshark uses this table to know which
protocol(s) to use for each user DLT.
This table is handled by an Section 9.6, “User Table” with the following fields.
encap one of the user dlts.
payload_proto This is the name of the payload protocol (the lowest layer in the packet data).
header_size if there is a header protocol (before the payload protocol) this tells which size
this header is. A value of 0 disables the header protocol.
header_proto The name of the header protocol to be used (uses "data" as default).
trailer_size if there is a trailer protocol (after the payload protocol) this tells which size
this trailer is. A value of 0 disables the trailer protocol.
trailer_proto The name of the trailer protocol to be used (uses "data" as default).
171
9.10. SNMP users Table

Wireshark uses this table to verify auhentication and to decrypt encrypted SNMPv3 packets.
This table is handled by an Section 9.6, “User Table” with the following fields.
engine_id If given this entry will be used only for packets whose engine id is this. This
field takes an hexadecimal string in the form 0102030405.
userName This is the userName. When a single user has more than one password for dif-
ferent SNMP-engines the first entry to match both is taken, if you need a catch
all engine-id (empty) that entry should be the last one.
auth_model Which auth model to use (either "MD5" or "SHA1").
authPassword The authentication password. Use '\xDD' for unprintable charachters.
priv_proto Which encryption algorithm to use (either "DES" or "AES").
privPassword The privacy password. Use '\xDD' for unprintable charachters.
172
173
Appendix A. Files and Folders
A.1. Capture Files
To understand which information will remain available after the captured packets are saved to a cap-
ture file, it's helpful to know a bit about the capture file contents.
Wireshark uses the libpcap file format as the default format to save captured packets, this format ex-
ists for a long time and it's pretty simple. However, it has some drawbacks: it's not extensible and
lacks some information that would be really helpful (e.g. being able to add a comment to a packet
"the problems start here" would be really nice).
In addition to the libpcap format, Wireshark supports several different capture file formats.
However, the problems described above also applies for these formats too.
A new capture file format "PCAP Next Generation Dump File Format" is currently under develop-
ment, which will fix these drawbacks. However, it still might take a while until the new file format
is ready and Wireshark can use it.
A.1.1. Libpcap File Contents

At the start of each libpcap capture file some basic information is stored like a magic number to
identify the libpcap file format. The most interesting information of this file start is the link layer
type (Ethernet, Token Ring, ...).
The following data is saved for each packet:
• the timestamp with millisecond resolution
• the packet length as it was "on the wire"
• the packet length as it's saved in the file
• the packet's raw bytes
A detailed description of the libpcap file format can be found at: http://wiki.wireshark.org/Develop-
ment/LibpcapFileFormat
A.1.2. Not Saved in the Capture File

Probably even more interesting for the everyday Wireshark usage is to know the things that are not
saved in the capture file:
• current selections (selected packet, ...)
• name resolution information, see Section 7.6, “Name Resolution” for details
Warning!
The name resolution information is rebuild each time Wireshark is restarted so this
information even might change when the capture file is reopened on the same ma-
chine later!
• the number of packets dropped while capturing
• packet marks set with "Edit/Mark Packet"
174
Files and Folders
• time references set with "Edit/Time Reference"
• the current display filter
• ...
175
Files and Folders
A.2. Configuration Files and Folders

Wireshark uses a number of files and folders while it is running. Some of these reside in the person-
al configuration folder and are used to maintain information between runs of Wireshark, while some
of them are maintained in system areas.
Tip
A list of the folders Wireshark actually uses can be found under the Folders tab in the
dialog box coming up, when you select About Wireshark from the Help menu.
The content format of the configuration files is the same on all platforms. However, to match the
different policies for Unix and windows platforms, different folders for these files are used.
Table A.1. Configuration files and folders overview

File/Folder Description Unix/Linux Windows folders
folders
preferences Settings from the / %WIRESHARK%\wireshark.conf,
Preferences dialog etc/wire- %APPDATA%\Wireshark\preferences
box. shark.conf,
$HOME/.wireshar
k/preferences
recent Recent GUI set- $HOME/.wireshar %APPDATA%\Wireshark\recent
tings (e.g. recent k/recent
files lists).
cfilters Capture filters. $HOME/.wireshar %WIRESHARK%\cfilters,
k/cfilters %APPDATA%\Wireshark\cfilters
dfilters Display filters. $HOME/.wireshar %WIRESHARK%\dfilters,
k/dfilters %APPDATA%\Wireshark\dfilters
colorfilters Coloring rules. $HOME/.wireshar %WIRESHARK%\colorfilters,
k/colorfilters %APPDATA%\Wireshark\colorfilters
dis- Disabled proto- $HOME/.wireshar %WIRESHARK%\disabled_protos,
abled_protos cols. k/disabled_protos %APPDATA%\Wireshark\disabled_prot
os
ethers Ethernet name res- /etc/ethers, %WIRESHARK%\ethers,
olution. $HOME/.wireshar %APPDATA%\Wireshark\ethers
k/ethers
manuf Ethernet name res- /etc/manuf, %WIRESHARK%\manuf,
olution. $HOME/.wireshar %APPDATA%\Wireshark\manuf
k/manuf
hosts IPv4 and IPv6 /etc/hosts, %WIRESHARK%\hosts,
name resolution. $HOME/.wireshar %APPDATA%\Wireshark\hosts
k/hosts
ipxnets IPX name resolu- /etc/ipxnets, %WIRESHARK%\ipxnets,
tion. $HOME/.wireshar %APPDATA%\Wireshark\ipxnets
k/ipxnets
plugins Plugin directories. / %WIRESHARK%\plugins\<version>,
usr/ %APPDATA%\Wireshark\plugins
share/wire-
shark/plugins, /
usr/loc-
al/
share/wire-
shark/plugins,
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Files and Folders
File/Folder Description Unix/Linux Windows folders

folders
$HOME/.wireshar
k/plugins
temp Temporary files. Environment: Environment: TMPDIR or TEMP
TMPDIR
Windows folders
%APPDATA% points to the personal configuration folder, typically C:\Documents
and Settings\<username>\Application Data (for further details, have a
look at Section A.3.1, “Windows profiles”), %WIRESHARK% points to the Wire-
shark program folder, typically C:\Program Files\Wireshark
Unix/Linux folders
The /etc folder is the global Wireshark configuration folder. The folder actually used
on your system may vary, maybe something like: /usr/local/etc.
preferences/wireshark.conf This file contains your Wireshark preferences, including de-

faults for capturing and displaying packets. It is a simple text
file containing statements of the form:
variable: value
The settings from this file are read in at program start and
written to disk when you press the Save button in the "Prefer-
ences" dialog box.
recent This file contains various GUI related settings like the main
window position and size, the recent files list and such. It is a
simple text file containing statements of the form:
variable: value
It is read at program start and written at program exit.
cfilters This file contains all the capture filters that you have defined
and saved. It consists of one or more lines, where each line
has the following format:
"<filter name>" <filter string>
written to disk when you press the Save button in the "Cap-
ture Filters" dialog box.
dfilters This file contains all the display filters that you have defined
"<filter name>" <filter string>
written to disk when you press the Save button in the "Dis-
177
Files and Folders
play Filters" dialog box.
colorfilters This file contains all the color filters that you have defined
@<filter name>@<filter string>

@[<bg RGB(16-bit)>][<fg RGB(16-bit)>]
written to disk when you press the Save button in the "Color-
ing Rules" dialog box.
disabled_protos Each line in this file specifies a disabled protocol name. The
following are some examples:
tcp
udp
written to disk when you press the Save button in the "En-
abled Protocols" dialog box.
ethers When Wireshark is trying to translate Ethernet hardware ad-

dresses to names, it consults the files listed in Table A.1,
“Configuration files and folders overview”. If an address is
not found in /etc/ethers, Wireshark looks in
$HOME/.wireshark/ethers
Each line in these files consists of one hardware address and

name separated by whitespace. The digits of hardware ad-
dresses are separated by colons (:), dashes (-) or periods(.).
The following are some examples:
ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff Broadcast
c0-00-ff-ff-ff-ff TR_broadcast
00.2b.08.93.4b.a1 Freds_machine
never written by Wireshark.
manuf Wireshark uses the files listed in Table A.1, “Configuration

files and folders overview” to translate the first three bytes of
an Ethernet address into a manufacturers name. This file has
the same format as the ethers file, except addresses are three
bytes long.
An example is:
00:00:01 Xerox # XEROX CORPORATION
hosts Wireshark uses the files listed in Table A.1, “Configuration

files and folders overview” to translate IPv4 and IPv6 ad-
dresses into names.
This file has the same format as the usual /etc/hosts file in
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Files and Folders
Unix systems.
An example is:
# Comments must be prepended by the # sign!

192.168.0.1 homeserver
ipxnets Wireshark uses the files listed in Table A.1, “Configuration

files and folders overview” to translate IPX network numbers
into names.
An example is:
C0.A8.2C.00 HR
c0-a8-1c-00 CEO
00:00:BE:EF IT_Server1
110f FileServer3
plugins folder Wireshark searches for plugins in the directories listed in Ta-
ble A.1, “Configuration files and folders overview”. They are
searched in the order listed.
temp folder If you start a new capture and don't specify a filename for it,
Wireshark uses this directory to place that file in, see Sec-
tion 4.6, “Capture files and file modes”.
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Files and Folders
A.3. Windows folders

Here you will find some details about the folders used in Wireshark on different Windows versions.
As already mentioned, you can find the currently used folders in the About Wireshark dialog.
A.3.1. Windows profiles

Windows uses some special directories to store user configuration files in, named the user profile.
This can be confusing, as the default directory location changed from version to version and might
also be different for English and internationalized versions of windows.
Note!
If you upgraded to a new windows version, your profile might be kept in the former
location, so the defaults mentioned here might not apply.
The following will try to guide you to the right place where to look for Wireshark's profile data.
95/98/ME The default in Windows 95/98/ME is: all users work with the
same profile, which is located at:
C:\windows\Application Data\Wireshark
98/ME (with enabled user pro- In Windows 98 and ME you can enable separate user profiles.
files) In that case, something like:
C:\windows\Profiles\<username>\Applicatio
n Data\Wireshark is used.
NT 4 C:\WINNT\Profiles\<username>\Application
Data\Wireshark
2000/XP C:\Documents and Set-

tings\<username>\Application Data, "Docu-
ments and Settings" and "Application Data" might be interna-
tionalized.
A.3.2. Windows NT/2000/XP roaming profiles

The following will only be applicable if you are using roaming profiles. This might be the case, if
you work in a Windows domain environment (used in huge company networks). The configurations
of all programs you use won't be saved on the local hard drive of the computer you are currently
working on, but on the domain server.
As Wireshark is using the correct places to store it's profile data, your settings will travel with you,
if you logon to a different computer the next time.
There is an exception to this: The "Local Settings" folder in your profile data (typically something
like: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings) will not be trans-
ferred to the domain server. This is the default for temporary capture files.
A.3.3. Windows temporary folder

Wireshark uses the folder which is set by the TMPDIR or TEMP environment variable. This vari-
able will be set by the windows installer.
The default location for temporary files on NT 4 is just C:\TEMP, and in 2000 the default location
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Files and Folders
is some directory under your profile directory but it might have "Temporary Files" in the path name.
181
Files and Folders
182
Appendix B. Protocols and Protocol
Fields
Wireshark distinguishes between protocols (e.g. tcp) and protocol fields (e.g. tcp.port).
A comprehensive list of all protocols and protocol fields can be found at: ht-
tp://www.wireshark.org/docs/dfref/
183
Appendix C. Wireshark Messages
Wireshark provides you with additional information generated out of the plain packet data or it may
need to indicate dissection problems. Messages generated by Wireshark are usually placed in [] par-
entheses.
C.1. Packet List Messages

These messages might appear in the packet list.
C.1.1. [Malformed Packet]

Malformed packet means that the protocol dissector can't work out the contents of the packet any
further. This can have various reasons:
• Wrong dissector Wireshark erroneously has chosen the wrong protocol dissector for this pack-
et. This will happen e.g. if you are using a protocol not on it's well known TCP or UDP port.
You may try Analyze|Decode As to circumvent this problem.
• Packet not reassembled The packet is longer than a single frame and it is not reassembled, see
Section 7.5, “Packet Reassembling” for further details.
• Packet is malformed The packet is actually wrong (malformed), meaning that a part of the
packet is just not as expected (not following the protocol specifications).
• Dissector is buggy The corresponding protocol dissector is simply buggy or still incomplete.
Any of the above is possible. You'll have to look into the specific situation to determine what it is.
You could disable the dissector by disabling the protocol on the Analyze menu and check how
Wireshark displays the packet then. You could (if it's TCP) enable reassembly for TCP and the spe-
cific dissector (if possible) in the Edit|Preferences menu. You could check the packet contents your-
self by reading the packet bytes and comparing it to the protocol specification. This could reveal a
dissector bug. Or you could find out that the packet is indeed wrong.
C.1.2. [Packet size limited during capture]

The packet size was limited during capture, see "Limit each packet to n bytes" at the Section 4.5,
“The "Capture Options" dialog box”. While dissecting, the current protocol dissector was simply
running out of packet bytes and had to give up. There's nothing else you can do now, except to re-
peat the whole capture process again with a higher (or no) packet size limitation.
184
Wireshark Messages
C.2. Packet Details Messages

These messages might appear in the packet details.
C.2.1. [Response in frame: 123]

The current packet is the request of a detected request/response pair. You can directly jump to the
corresponding response packet just by double clicking on this message.
C.2.2. [Request in frame: 123]

Same as "Response in frame: 123" above, but the other way round.
C.2.3. [Time from request: 0.123 seconds]

The time between the request and the response packets.
185
Wireshark Messages
186
Appendix D. Related command line
tools
D.1. Introduction
Beside the Wireshark GUI application, there are some command line tools, which can be helpful for
doing some more specialized things. These tools will be described in this chapter.
187
Related command line tools
D.2. tshark: Terminal-based Wireshark

TShark is a terminal oriented version of Wireshark designed for capturing and displaying packets
when an interactive user interface isn't necessary or available. It supports the same options as wire-
shark. For more information on tshark, see the manual pages (man tshark).
188
D.3. tcpdump: Capturing with tcpdump for

viewing with Wireshark
There are occasions when you want to capture packets using tcpdump rather than wireshark, espe-
cially when you want to do a remote capture and do not want the network load associated with run-
ning Wireshark remotely (not to mention all the X traffic polluting your capture).
However, the default tcpdump parameters result in a capture file where each packet is truncated,
because tcpdump, by default, does only capture the first 68 bytes of each packet.
To ensure that you capture complete packets, use the following command:
tcpdump -i <interface> -s 1500 -w <some-file>
You will have to specify the correct interface and the name of a file to save into. In addition, you
will have to terminate the capture with ^C when you believe you have captured enough packets.
Note!
tcpdump is not part of the Wireshark distribution. You can get it from: ht-
tp://www.tcpdump.org for various platforms.
189
D.4. dumpcap: Capturing with dumpcap for

viewing with Wireshark
Dumpcap is a network traffic dump tool. It lets you capture packet data from a live network and
write the packets to a file. Dumpcap's native capture file format is libpcap format, which is also the
format used by Wireshark, tcpdump and various other tools.
Without any options set it will use the pcap library to capture traffic from the first available network
interface and writes the received raw packet data, along with the packets' time stamps into a libpcap
file.
Packet capturing is performed with the pcap library. The capture filter syntax follows the rules of
the pcap library.
Example D.1. Help information available from dumpcap
Dumpcap 0.99.0
Capture network packets and dump them into a libpcap file.
See http://www.wireshark.org for more information.
Usage: dumpcap [options] ...
Capture interface:
-i <interface> name or idx of interface (def: first none loopback)
-f <capture filter> packet filter in libpcap filter syntax
-s <snaplen> packet snapshot length (def: 65535)
-p don't capture in promiscuous mode
-B <buffer size> size of kernel buffer (def: 1MB)
-y <link type> link layer type (def: first appropriate)
-D print list of interfaces and exit
-L print list of link-layer types of iface and exit
Stop conditions:
-c <packet count> stop after n packets (def: infinite)
-a <autostop cond.> ... duration:NUM - stop after NUM seconds
filesize:NUM - stop this file after NUM KB
files:NUM - stop after NUM files
Output (files):
-w <filename> name of file to save (def: tempfile)
-b <ringbuffer opt.> ... duration:NUM - switch to next file after NUM secs
filesize:NUM - switch to next file after NUM KB
files:NUM - ringbuffer: replace after NUM files
Miscellaneous:
-v print version information and exit
-h display this help and exit
Example: dumpcap -i eth0 -a duration:60 -w output.pcap
"Capture network packets from interface eth0 until 60s passed into output.pcap"
Use Ctrl-C to stop capturing at any time.
190
D.5. capinfos: Print information about

capture files
Included with Wireshark is a small utility called capinfos, which is a command-line utility to print
information about binary capture files.
Example D.2. Help information available from capinfos
$ capinfos -h
Usage: capinfos [-t] [-c] [-s] [-d] [-u] [-a] [-e] [-y]
[-i] [-z] [-h] <capfile>
where -t display the capture type of <capfile>
-c count the number of packets
-s display the size of the file
-d display the total length of all packets in the file
(in bytes)
-u display the capture duration (in seconds)
-a display the capture start time
-e display the capture end time
-y display average data rate (in bytes)
-i display average data rate (in bits)
-z display average packet size (in bytes)
-h produces this help listing.
If no data flags are given, default is to display all statistics
191
D.6. editcap: Edit capture files

Included with Wireshark is a small utility called editcap, which is a command-line utility for work-
ing with capture files. Its main function is to remove packets from capture files, but it can also be
used to convert capture files from one format to another, as well as print information about capture
files.
Example D.3. Help information available from editcap
$ editcap.exe -h
Editcap 0.99.3
Edit and/or translate the format of capture files.
See http://www.wireshark.org for more information.
Usage: editcap [options] ... <infile> <outfile> [ <packet#>[-<packet#>] ... ]
A single packet or a range of packets can be selected.
Packets:
-C <choplen> chop each packet at the end by <choplen> bytes
-d remove duplicate packets
-E <error probability> set the probability (between 0.0 and 1.0 incl.)
that a particular packet byte will be randomly changed
-r keep the selected packets, default is to delete them
-s <snaplen> truncate packets to max. <snaplen> bytes of data
-t <time adjustment> adjust the timestamp of selected packets,
<time adjustment> is in relative seconds (e.g. -0.5)
-A <start time> don't output packets whose timestamp is before the
given time (format as YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss)
-B <stop time> don't output packets whose timestamp is after the
given time (format as YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss)
Output File(s):
-c <packets per file> split the packet output to different files,
with a maximum of <packets per file> each
-F <capture type> set the output file type, default is libpcap
an empty "-F" option will list the file types
-T <encap type> set the output file encapsulation type,
default is the same as the input file
an empty "-T" option will list the encapsulation types
Miscellaneous:
-h display this help and exit
-v verbose output
$ editcap.exe -F
editcap.exe: option requires an argument -- F
editcap.exe: The available capture file types for "F":
libpcap - Wireshark/tcpdump/... - libpcap
nseclibpcap - Wireshark - nanosecond libpcap
modlibpcap - Modified tcpdump - libpcap
nokialibpcap - Nokia tcpdump - libpcap
rh6_1libpcap - RedHat 6.1 tcpdump - libpcap
suse6_3libpcap - SuSE 6.3 tcpdump - libpcap
5views - Accellent 5Views capture
dct2000 - Catapult DCT2000 trace (.out format)
nettl - HP-UX nettl trace
netmon1 - Microsoft NetMon 1.x
netmon2 - Microsoft NetMon 2.x
ngsniffer - NA Sniffer (DOS)
ngwsniffer_1_1 - NA Sniffer (Windows) 1.1
ngwsniffer_2_0 - NA Sniffer (Windows) 2.00x
niobserverv9 - Network Instruments Observer (V9)
lanalyzer - Novell LANalyzer
snoop - Sun snoop
rf5 - Tektronix K12xx 32-bit .rf5 format
visual - Visual Networks traffic capture
$ editcap.exe -F
editcap.exe: option requires an argument -- T
editcap.exe: The available encapsulation types for "T":
ether - Ethernet
tr - Token Ring
slip - SLIP
ppp - PPP
fddi - FDDI
fddi-swapped - FDDI with bit-swapped MAC addresses
192
rawip - Raw IP
arcnet - ARCNET
arcnet_linux - Linux ARCNET
atm-rfc1483 - RFC 1483 ATM
linux-atm-clip - Linux ATM CLIP
lapb - LAPB
atm-pdus - ATM PDUs
atm-pdus-untruncated - ATM PDUs - untruncated
null - NULL
ascend - Lucent/Ascend access equipment
isdn - ISDN
ip-over-fc - RFC 2625 IP-over-Fibre Channel
ppp-with-direction - PPP with Directional Info
ieee-802-11 - IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN
prism - IEEE 802.11 plus Prism II monitor mode header
ieee-802-11-radio - IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN with radio information
ieee-802-11-radiotap - IEEE 802.11 plus radiotap WLAN header
ieee-802-11-avs - IEEE 802.11 plus AVS WLAN header
linux-sll - Linux cooked-mode capture
frelay - Frame Relay
frelay-with-direction - Frame Relay with Directional Info
chdlc - Cisco HDLC
ios - Cisco IOS internal
ltalk - Localtalk
pflog-old - OpenBSD PF Firewall logs, pre-3.4
hhdlc - HiPath HDLC
docsis - Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification
cosine - CoSine L2 debug log
whdlc - Wellfleet HDLC
sdlc - SDLC
tzsp - Tazmen sniffer protocol
enc - OpenBSD enc(4) encapsulating interface
pflog - OpenBSD PF Firewall logs
chdlc-with-direction - Cisco HDLC with Directional Info
bluetooth-h4 - Bluetooth H4
mtp2 - SS7 MTP2
mtp3 - SS7 MTP3
irda - IrDA
user0 - USER 0
user1 - USER 1
user2 - USER 2
user3 - USER 3
user4 - USER 4
user5 - USER 5
user6 - USER 6
user7 - USER 7
user8 - USER 8
user9 - USER 9
user10 - USER 10
user11 - USER 11
user12 - USER 12
user13 - USER 13
user14 - USER 14
user15 - USER 15
symantec - Symantec Enterprise Firewall
ap1394 - Apple IP-over-IEEE 1394
bacnet-ms-tp - BACnet MS/TP
raw-icmp-nettl - Raw ICMP with nettl headers
raw-icmpv6-nettl - Raw ICMPv6 with nettl headers
gprs-llc - GPRS LLC
juniper-atm1 - Juniper ATM1
juniper-atm2 - Juniper ATM2
redback - Redback SmartEdge
rawip-nettl - Raw IP with nettl headers
ether-nettl - Ethernet with nettl headers
tr-nettl - Token Ring with nettl headers
fddi-nettl - FDDI with nettl headers
unknown-nettl - Unknown link-layer type with nettl headers
mtp2-with-phdr - MTP2 with pseudoheader
juniper-pppoe - Juniper PPPoE
gcom-tie1 - GCOM TIE1
gcom-serial - GCOM Serial
x25-nettl - X25 with nettl headers
k12 - K12 protocol analyzer
juniper-mlppp - Juniper MLPPP
juniper-mlfr - Juniper MLFR
juniper-ether - Juniper Ethernet
juniper-ppp - Juniper PPP
juniper-frelay - Juniper Frame-Relay
juniper-chdlc - Juniper C-HDLC
juniper-ggsn - Juniper GGSN
lapd - LAPD
dct2000 - Catapult DCT2000
ber - ASN.1 Basic Encoding Rules
193
Where each option has the following meaning:
-r This option specifies that the frames listed should be kept, not
deleted. The default is to delete the listed frames.
-h This option provides help.
-v This option specifies verbose operation. The default is silent

operation.
-T {encap type} This option specifies the frame encapsulation type to use.
It is mainly for converting funny captures to something that

Wireshark can deal with.
The default frame encapsulation type is the same as the input

encapsulation.
-F {capture type} This option specifies the capture file format to write the out-
put file in.
The default is libpcap format.
-s {snaplen} Specifies that packets should be truncated to {snaplen} bytes

of data.
-t {time adjustment} Specifies the time adjustment to be applied to selected pack-

ets.
{infile} This parameter specifies the input file to use. It must be

present.
{outfile} This parameter specifies the output file to use. It must be

present.
[record#[-][record# ...]] This optional parameter specifies the records to include or ex-
clude (depending on the -r option. You can specify individual
records or a range of records.
194
D.7. mergecap: Merging multiple capture files

into one
Mergecap is a program that combines multiple saved capture files into a single output file specified
by the -w argument. Mergecap knows how to read libpcap capture files, including those of tcpdump.
In addition, Mergecap can read capture files from snoop (including Shomiti) and atmsnoop, LanA-
lyzer, Sniffer (compressed or uncompressed), Microsoft Network Monitor, AIX's iptrace, NetXray,
Sniffer Pro, RADCOM's WAN/LAN analyzer, Lucent/Ascend router debug output, HP-UX's nettl,
and the dump output from Toshiba's ISDN routers. There is no need to tell Mergecap what type of
file you are reading; it will determine the file type by itself. Mergecap is also capable of reading any
of these file formats if they are compressed using gzip. Mergecap recognizes this directly from the
file; the '.gz' extension is not required for this purpose.
By default, it writes the capture file in libpcap format, and writes all of the packets in both input
capture files to the output file. The -F flag can be used to specify the format in which to write the
capture file; it can write the file in libpcap format (standard libpcap format, a modified format used
by some patched versions of libpcap, the format used by Red Hat Linux 6.1, or the format used by
SuSE Linux 6.3), snoop format, uncompressed Sniffer format, Microsoft Network Monitor 1.x
format, and the format used by Windows-based versions of the Sniffer software.
Packets from the input files are merged in chronological order based on each frame's timestamp, un-
less the -a flag is specified. Mergecap assumes that frames within a single capture file are already
stored in chronological order. When the -a flag is specified, packets are copied directly from each
input file to the output file, independent of each frame's timestamp.
If the -s flag is used to specify a snapshot length, frames in the input file with more captured data
than the specified snapshot length will have only the amount of data specified by the snapshot
length written to the output file. This may be useful if the program that is to read the output file can-
not handle packets larger than a certain size (for example, the versions of snoop in Solaris 2.5.1 and
Solaris 2.6 appear to reject Ethernet frames larger than the standard Ethernet MTU, making them in-
capable of handling gigabit Ethernet captures if jumbo frames were used).
If the -T flag is used to specify an encapsulation type, the encapsulation type of the output capture
file will be forced to the specified type, rather than being the type appropriate to the encapsulation
type of the input capture file. Note that this merely forces the encapsulation type of the output file to
be the specified type; the packet headers of the packets will not be translated from the encapsulation
type of the input capture file to the specified encapsulation type (for example, it will not translate an
Ethernet capture to an FDDI capture if an Ethernet capture is read and '-T fddi' is specified).
Example D.4. Help information available from mergecap
$ mergecap.exe -h
mergecap version 0.10.5
Usage: mergecap [-hva] [-s <snaplen>] [-T <encap type>]
[-F <capture type>] -w <outfile> <infile> [...]
where -h produces this help listing.
-v verbose operation, default is silent
-a files should be concatenated, not merged
Default merges based on frame timestamps
-s <snaplen>: truncate packets to <snaplen> bytes of data
-w <outfile>: sets output filename to <outfile>
-T <encap type> encapsulation type to use:
ether - Ethernet
tr - Token Ring
slip - SLIP
ppp - PPP
fddi - FDDI
fddi-swapped - FDDI with bit-swapped MAC addresses
rawip - Raw IP
arcnet - ARCNET
arcnet_linux - Linux ARCNET
atm-rfc1483 - RFC 1483 ATM
linux-atm-clip - Linux ATM CLIP
lapb - LAPB
195
atm-pdus - ATM PDUs

atm-pdus-untruncated - ATM PDUs - untruncated
null - NULL
ascend - Lucent/Ascend access equipment
isdn - ISDN
ip-over-fc - RFC 2625 IP-over-Fibre Channel
ppp-with-direction - PPP with Directional Info
ieee-802-11 - IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN
prism - IEEE 802.11 plus Prism II monitor mode header
ieee-802-11-radio - IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN with radio information
ieee-802-11-bsd - IEEE 802.11 plus BSD WLAN header
ieee-802-11-avs - IEEE 802.11 plus AVS WLAN header
linux-sll - Linux cooked-mode capture
frelay - Frame Relay
frelay-with-direction - Frame Relay with Directional Info
chdlc - Cisco HDLC
ios - Cisco IOS internal
ltalk - Localtalk
pflog-old - OpenBSD PF Firewall logs, pre-3.4
hhdlc - HiPath HDLC
docsis - Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification
cosine - CoSine L2 debug log
whdlc - Wellfleet HDLC
sdlc - SDLC
tzsp - Tazmen sniffer protocol
enc - OpenBSD enc(4) encapsulating interface
pflog - OpenBSD PF Firewall logs
chdlc-with-direction - Cisco HDLC with Directional Info
bluetooth-h4 - Bluetooth H4
mtp2 - SS7 MTP2
mtp3 - SS7 MTP3
irda - IrDA
user0 - USER 0
user1 - USER 1
user2 - USER 2
user3 - USER 3
user4 - USER 4
user5 - USER 5
user6 - USER 6
user7 - USER 7
user8 - USER 8
user9 - USER 9
user10 - USER 10
user11 - USER 11
user12 - USER 12
user13 - USER 13
user14 - USER 14
user15 - USER 15
symantec - Symantec Enterprise Firewall
ap1394 - Apple IP-over-IEEE 1394
bacnet-ms-tp - BACnet MS/TP
default is the same as the first input file
-F <capture type> capture file type to write:
libpcap - libpcap (tcpdump, Wireshark, etc.)
rh6_1libpcap - RedHat Linux 6.1 libpcap (tcpdump)
suse6_3libpcap - SuSE Linux 6.3 libpcap (tcpdump)
modlibpcap - modified libpcap (tcpdump)
nokialibpcap - Nokia libpcap (tcpdump)
lanalyzer - Novell LANalyzer
ngsniffer - Network Associates Sniffer (DOS-based)
snoop - Sun snoop
netmon1 - Microsoft Network Monitor 1.x
netmon2 - Microsoft Network Monitor 2.x
ngwsniffer_1_1 - Network Associates Sniffer (Windows-based) 1.1
ngwsniffer_2_0 - Network Associates Sniffer (Windows-based) 2.00x
visual - Visual Networks traffic capture
5views - Accellent 5Views capture
niobserverv9 - Network Instruments Observer version 9
default is libpcap
-h Prints the version and options and exits.
-v Causes mergecap to print a number of messages while it's working.
-a Causes the frame timestamps to be ignored, writing all packets from the first input file fol-
lowed by all packets from the second input file. By default, when -a is not specified, the con-
tents of the input files are merged in chronological order based on each frame's timestamp.
Note: when merging, mergecap assumes that packets within a capture file are already in chro-
nological order.
196
-s Sets the snapshot length to use when writing the data.
-w Sets the output filename.
-T Sets the packet encapsulation type of the output capture file.
-F Sets the file format of the output capture file.
A simple example merging dhcp-capture.libpcap and imap-1.libpcap into out-

file.libpcap is shown below.
Example D.5. Simple example of using mergecap
$ mergecap -w outfile.libpcap dhcp-capture.libpcap imap-1.libpcap
197
D.8. text2pcap: Converting ASCII hexdumps

to network captures
There may be some occasions when you wish to convert a hex dump of some network traffic into a
libpcap file.
Text2pcap is a program that reads in an ASCII hex dump and writes the data described into a libp-
cap-style capture file. text2pcap can read hexdumps with multiple packets in them, and build a cap-
ture file of multiple packets. text2pcap is also capable of generating dummy Ethernet, IP and UDP
headers, in order to build fully processable packet dumps from hexdumps of application-level data
only.
Text2pcap understands a hexdump of the form generated by od -A x -t x1. In other words, each byte
is individually displayed and surrounded with a space. Each line begins with an offset describing the
position in the file. The offset is a hex number (can also be octal - see -o), of more than two hex di-
gits. Here is a sample dump that text2pcap can recognize:
000000 00 e0 1e a7 05 6f 00 10 ........
000008 5a a0 b9 12 08 00 46 00 ........
000010 03 68 00 00 00 00 0a 2e ........
000018 ee 33 0f 19 08 7f 0f 19 ........
000020 03 80 94 04 00 00 10 01 ........
000028 16 a2 0a 00 03 50 00 0c ........
000030 01 01 0f 19 03 80 11 01 ........
There is no limit on the width or number of bytes per line. Also the text dump at the end of the line
is ignored. Bytes/hex numbers can be uppercase or lowercase. Any text before the offset is ignored,
including email forwarding characters '>'. Any lines of text between the bytestring lines is ignored.
The offsets are used to track the bytes, so offsets must be correct. Any line which has only bytes
without a leading offset is ignored. An offset is recognized as being a hex number longer than two
characters. Any text after the bytes is ignored (e.g. the character dump). Any hex numbers in this
text are also ignored. An offset of zero is indicative of starting a new packet, so a single text file
with a series of hexdumps can be converted into a packet capture with multiple packets. Multiple
packets are read in with timestamps differing by one second each. In general, short of these restric-
tions, text2pcap is pretty liberal about reading in hexdumps and has been tested with a variety of
mangled outputs (including being forwarded through email multiple times, with limited line wrap
etc.)
There are a couple of other special features to note. Any line where the first non-whitespace charac-
ter is '#' will be ignored as a comment. Any line beginning with #TEXT2PCAP is a directive and
options can be inserted after this command to be processed by text2pcap. Currently there are no dir-
ectives implemented; in the future, these may be used to give more fine grained control on the dump
and the way it should be processed e.g. timestamps, encapsulation type etc.
Text2pcap also allows the user to read in dumps of application-level data, by inserting dummy L2,
L3 and L4 headers before each packet. The user can elect to insert Ethernet headers, Ethernet and
IP, or Ethernet, IP and UDP headers before each packet. This allows Wireshark or any other full-
packet decoder to handle these dumps.
Example D.6. Help information available for text2pcap
$ text2pcap.exe -h
Usage: text2pcap.exe [-h] [-d] [-q] [-o h|o] [-l typenum] [-e l3pid] [-i proto]
[-m max-packet] [-u srcp,destp] [-T srcp,destp] [-s srcp,destp,tag]
[-S srcp,destp,tag] [-t timefmt] <input-filename> <output-filename>
where <input-filename> specifies input filename (use - for standard input)
<output-filename> specifies output filename (use - for standard output)
[options] are one or more of the following
198
-h : Display this help message

-d : Generate detailed debug of parser states
-o hex|oct : Parse offsets as (h)ex or (o)ctal. Default is hex
-l typenum : Specify link-layer type number. Default is 1 (Ethernet).
See net/bpf.h for list of numbers.
-q : Generate no output at all (automatically turns off -d)
-e l3pid : Prepend dummy Ethernet II header with specified L3PID (in
HEX)
Example: -e 0x800
-i proto : Prepend dummy IP header with specified IP protocol (in
DECIMAL).
Automatically prepends Ethernet header as well.
Example: -i 46
-m max-packet : Max packet length in output, default is 64000
-u srcp,destp : Prepend dummy UDP header with specified dest and source ports
(in DECIMAL).
Automatically prepends Ethernet and IP headers as well
Example: -u 30,40
-T srcp,destp : Prepend dummy TCP header with specified dest and source ports
(in DECIMAL).
Example: -T 50,60
-s srcp,dstp,tag: Prepend dummy SCTP header with specified dest/source ports
and verification tag (in DECIMAL).
Example: -s 30,40,34
-S srcp,dstp,ppi: Prepend dummy SCTP header with specified dest/source ports
and verification tag 0. It also prepends a dummy SCTP DATA
chunk header with payload protocol identifier ppi.
Example: -S 30,40,34
-t timefmt : Treats the text before the packet as a date/time code; the
specified argument is a format string of the sort supported
by strptime.
Example: The time "10:15:14.5476" has the format code
"%H:%M:%S."
NOTE: The subsecond component delimiter must be specified
(.) but no pattern is required; the remaining number
is assumed to be fractions of a second.
-w <filename> Write the capture file generated by text2pcap to <filename>. The de-
fault is to write to standard output.
-h Display the help message
-d Displays debugging information during the process. Can be used

multiple times to generate more debugging information.
-q Be completely quiet during the process.
-o hex|oct Specify the radix for the offsets (hex or octal). Defaults to hex. This
corresponds to the -A option for od.
-l Specify the link-layer type of this packet. Default is Ethernet(1). See

net/bpf.h for the complete list of possible encapsulations. Note that
this option should be used if your dump is a complete hex dump of
an encapsulated packet and you wish to specify the exact type of en-
capsulation. Example: -l 7 for ARCNet packets.
-e l3pid Include a dummy Ethernet header before each packet. Specify the
L3PID for the Ethernet header in hex. Use this option if your dump
has Layer 3 header and payload (e.g. IP header), but no Layer 2 en-
capsulation. Example: -e 0x806 to specify an ARP packet.
For IP packets, instead of generating a fake Ethernet header you can

also use -l 12 to indicate a raw IP packet to Wireshark. Note that -l
12 does not work for any non-IP Layer 3 packet (e.g. ARP), whereas
generating a dummy Ethernet header with -e works for any sort of L3
packet.
-u srcport destport Include dummy UDP headers before each packet. Specify the source
199
and destination UDP ports for the packet in decimal. Use this option
if your dump is the UDP payload of a packet but does not include
any UDP, IP or Ethernet headers. Note that this automatically in-
cludes appropriate Ethernet and IP headers with each packet. Ex-
ample: -u 1000 69 to make the packets look like TFTP/UDP packets.
200
D.9. idl2wrs: Creating dissectors from

CORBA IDL files
In an ideal world idl2wrs would be mentioned in the users guide in passing and documented in the
developers guide. As the developers guide has not yet been completed it will be documented here.
D.9.1. What is it?

As you have probably guessed from the name, idl2wrs takes a user specified IDL file and attempts
to build a dissector that can decode the IDL traffic over GIOP. The resulting file is "C" code, that
should compile okay as a Wireshark dissector.
idl2wrs basically parses the data struct given to it by the omniidl compiler, and using the GIOP API
available in packet-giop.[ch], generates get_CDR_xxx calls to decode the CORBA traffic on the
wire.
It consists of 4 main files.
README.idl2wrs This document
wireshark_be.py The main compiler backend
wireshark_gen.py A helper class, that generates the C code.
idl2wrs A simple shell script wrapper that the end user should use to generate the
dissector from the IDL file(s).
D.9.2. Why do this?

It is important to understand what CORBA traffic looks like over GIOP/IIOP, and to help build a
tool that can assist in troubleshooting CORBA interworking. This was especially the case after see-
ing a lot of discussions about how particular IDL types are represented inside an octet stream.
I have also had comments/feedback that this tool would be good for say a CORBA class when
teaching students what CORBA traffic looks like "on the wire".
It is also COOL to work on a great Open Source project such as the case with "Wireshark" ( ht-
tp://www.wireshark.org )
D.9.3. How to use idl2wrs

To use the idl2wrs to generate Wireshark dissectors, you need the following:
Prerequisites to using idl2wrs
1. Python must be installed. See http://python.org/
2. omniidl from the the omniORB package must be available. See http://omniorb.sourceforge.net/
3. Of course you need Wireshark installed to compile the code and tweak it if required. idl2wrs is
part of the standard Wireshark distribution
To use idl2wrs to generate an Wireshark dissector from an idl file use the following procedure:
201
Procedure for converting a CORBA idl file into a Wireshark dissector
1. To write the C code to stdout.

idl2wrs <your file.idl>
eg:
idl2wrs echo.idl
2. To write to a file, just redirect the output.

idl2wrs echo.idl > packet-test-idl.c
You may wish to comment out the register_giop_user_module() code and that will leave you
with heuristic dissection.
If you don't want to use the shell script wrapper, then try steps 3 or 4 instead.
3. To write the C code to stdout.

Usage: omniidl -p ./ -b wireshark_be <your file.idl>
eg:
omniidl -p ./ -b wireshark_be echo.idl
4. To write to a file, just redirect the output.

omniidl -p ./ -b wireshark_be echo.idl > packet-test-idl.c
You may wish to comment out the register_giop_user_module() code and that will leave you
with heuristic dissection.
5. Copy the resulting C code to your Wireshark src directory, edit the two make files to include
the packet-test-idl.c
cp packet-test-idl.c /dir/where/wireshark/lives/
edit Makefile.am
edit Makefile.nmake
6. Run configure
./configure (or ./autogen.sh)
7. Compile the code

make
8. Good Luck !!
D.9.4. TODO
1. Exception code not generated (yet), but can be added manually.
2. Enums not converted to symbolic values (yet), but can be added manually.
3. Add command line options etc
202
4. More I am sure :-)
D.9.5. Limitations
See the TODO list inside packet-giop.c
D.9.6. Notes
1. The "-p ./" option passed to omniidl indicates that the wireshark_be.py and wireshark_gen.py
are residing in the current directory. This may need tweaking if you place these files some-
where else.
2. If it complains about being unable to find some modules (eg tempfile.py), you may want to
check if PYTHONPATH is set correctly. On my Linux box, it is PYTHON-
PATH=/usr/lib/python1.5/
203
204
Appendix E. This Document's License
(GPL)
As with the original licence and documentation distributed with Wireshark, this document is
covered by the GNU General Public Licence (GNU GPL).
If you haven't read the GPL before, please do so. It explains all the things that you are allowed to do
with this code and documentation.
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your
freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public
License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This
General Public License applies to most of the Free Software
Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to
using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by
the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to
your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it
in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights.
These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you
distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that
you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their
rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and
(2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy,
distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain
that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free
software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we
want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so
that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original
authors' reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software
patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free
program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the
program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any
patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and
modification follow.
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains
a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below,
refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program"
means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:
that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it,
205
This Document's License (GPL)
either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another

language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in
the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of
running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program
is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the
Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the
notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty;
and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License
along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
parties under the terms of this License.
c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you
distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the
entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest
your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to
exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or
collective works based on the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program
with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of
a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under
the scope of this License.
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
received the program in object code or executable form with such
an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
206
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source
code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any
associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to
control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a
special exception, the source code distributed need not include
anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
itself accompanies the executable.
If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering
access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent
access to copy the source code from the same place counts as
distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not
compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program
except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt
otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is
void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under
this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such
parties remain in full compliance.
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are
prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by
modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the
Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and
all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying
the Program or works based on it.
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further
restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to
this License.
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot
distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this
License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you
may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent
license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by
all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then
the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under
any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to
apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other
circumstances.
It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any
patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any
such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the
integrity of the free software distribution system, which is
implemented by public license practices. Many people have made
generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed
through that system in reliance on consistent application of that
system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing
to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot
impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to
be a consequence of the rest of this License.
8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in
certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the
original copyright holder who places the Program under this License
may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding
those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among
countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates
the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions
of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will
be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
address new problems or concerns.
207
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program

specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any
later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions
either of that version or of any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of
this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software
Foundation.
10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free
programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author
to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free
Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes
make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals
of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and
of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.
NO WARRANTY
11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY
FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN
OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS
TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE
PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING,
REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR
REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING
OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED
TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY
YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER
PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest
to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this
when it starts in an interactive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.
The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate
parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may
be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be
mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your
school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if
necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
208
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program

`Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.
<signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may
consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the
library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General
Public License instead of this License.
209

How To Use Wireshark

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Wireshark User's Guide

20996 for Wireshark 0.99.5

for Wireshark 0.99.5

3.5. The "File" menu .....................................................................................31

6.4. Building display filter expressions ........................................................... 110

9.3. Packet colorization ............................................................................... 160

2. Who should read this document?

• Martin Regner, for his various suggestions and corrections.

• Graeme Hewson, for a lot of grammatical corrections.

4. About this document

You will find some specially marked parts in this book:

5. Where to get the latest copy of this

6. Providing feedback about this document

1.1.1. Some intended purposes

• network administrators use it to troubleshoot network problems

• network security engineers use it to examine security problems

• developers use it to debug protocol implementations

• people use it to learn network protocol internals

• Available for UNIX and Windows.

• Capture live packet data from a network interface.

• Display packets with very detailed protocol information.

• Open and Save packet data captured.

• Filter packets on many criteria.

• Search for packets on many criteria.

• Colorize packet display based on filters.

• Create various statistics.

• ... and a lot more!

1.1.3. Live capture from many different network media

1.1.4. Import files from many other capture programs

1.1.5. Export files for many other capture programs

1.1.6. Many protocol decoders

1.1.7. Open Source Software

1.1.8. What Wireshark is not

1.2. System Requirements

1.2.1. General Remarks

• If Wireshark is running out of memory it crashes, see: http:/ / wiki.wireshark.org/ KnownBugs/

• Wireshark won't benefit much from Multiprocessor/Hyperthread systems as time consuming

1.2.2. Microsoft Windows

• 128MB RAM system memory (recommended: 256MBytes or more)

• A supported network card for capturing:

• Ethernet: any card supported by Windows should do

• Other media: See http://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/NetworkMedia

• Windows CE and the embedded (NT/XP) versions are not supported!

1.2.3. Unix / Linux

Binary packages are available for at least the following platforms:

• Red Hat Fedora/Enterprise Linux

1.3. Where to get Wireshark?

1.4. A brief history of Wireshark

1.5. Development and maintenance of

1.6. Reporting problems and getting help

Read the FAQ!

An online version is available at the Wireshark website: http://www.wireshark.org/faq.html. You

1.6.4. Mailing Lists

1.6.5. Reporting Problems

2. Information about the platform you run Wireshark on.

3. A detailed description of your problem.

Don't send large files!

Don't send confidential information!

1.6.6. Reporting Crashes on UNIX/Linux platforms