The Ethereal Network Protocol Analyzer [LWN.net]

Ethereal is an open-source and cross-platform network protocol analyzer that offers a wide range of useful features for the network administrator. [Ethereal]

Ethereal is used by network professionals around the world for troubleshooting, analysis, software and protocol development, and education. It has all of the standard features you would expect in a protocol analyzer, and several features not seen in any other product. Its open source license allows talented experts in the networking community to add enhancements. It runs on all popular computing platforms, including Unix, Linux, and Windows.

Ethereal features include:

The ability to read and dissect packets off of live networks.
Support for ethernet, PPP, FDDI, Token-Ring, IEEE 802.11, and other network hardware.
The ability to decipher packet streams stored in various file formats.
Support for 512 different network protocols, more protocols are typically added with each new version.
Output can be sent to a GUI or TTY interface.
Output can be saved as plain text or PostScript formatted files.
Support for output display filters.

A complete set of Ethereal documentation is available online, the FAQ is available for common questions, and the Screen Shots show the software in action.

Ethereal source code and pre-compiled packages are available. The long list of authors is a great example of open-source cooperation. Ethereal has been released under the GNU General Public License.

Version 0.10.4 of Ethereal was released this week. Changes include new GUI features under GTK+ 2.4, better PostScript output, the ability to set preferences on the main display window, support for a number of new network protocols, improvements to the existing network protocol support, and more.

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The Ethereal Network Protocol Analyzer

Posted May 20, 2004 21:28 UTC (Thu) by kbob (subscriber, #1770) [Link]

I was disappointed to see that the Ethereal project has taken their tag line off the front page. It was the high point of the site, IMO:

Sniffing the glue that holds the Internet together

Ah, well. I guess we all become responsible sometime. *sigh*

K<bob>