Wireshark mailing list archives

Re: How does tshark "synchronize" multiple interfaces?


From: "S. Jacobi" <sjacobi () mailueberfall de>
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2018 20:54:36 +0100

On Tue, 6 Feb 2018 10:31:38 -0800
Guy Harris <guy () alum mit edu> wrote:

On Feb 6, 2018, at 9:20 AM, Richard Sharpe
<realrichardsharpe () gmail com> wrote:

On Tue, Feb 6, 2018 at 9:07 AM, S. Jacobi
<sjacobi () mailueberfall de> wrote:  
On Tue, 6 Feb 2018 09:05:14 -0800
Richard Sharpe <realrichardsharpe () gmail com> wrote:
  
As far as I am aware it is the kernel that is doing this. Also, I
believe that only Linux supports the any device.  

We are on Linux, yes, but we don't capture from any. tshark allows
to specify multiple interfaces.  

I have not looked at the code, but I suspect that it is something
like this:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37294540/binding-the-af-packet-socket-to-all-interfaces

That is, the kernel is doing it.  

That's how the "any" device is implemented by libpcap, so that's what
happens if you capture on the "any" device.

However, if, in Wireshark or TShark or dumpcap, you capture from an
explicitly specified list of interfaces containing more than one
interface, there are multiple pcap_t's open, and packets are
separately received from all of those pcap_t's and those are written
to a single capture file.

So if they aren't in timestamp order when you explicitly capture on
more than one interface, that's dumpcap's fault (which means it's the
fault of "Wireshark", in the sense of the entire Wireshark release,
as dumpcap is the program that does the packet capturing for
Wireshark and TShark), not the fault of the OS kernel.

The packets out-of-timestamp-order are quite rare and always between
two interfaces. It could be that dumpcap tries to put them in the
correct order but fails to do so when one interface lags behind. Thanks
for your answers anyway.
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