How to get a packet capture(pcap)

Mar 24 2008 01:43:27 AM Posted By : Raj
Comments (4)

Most of the times, a packet capture (pcap) file is what we look for first while troubleshooting any issue. Surprisingly we find that solves the problem in most cases. Corrective action is what is required next which shouldn’t be much of an issue.

A packet capture(pcap) is a file that contains the network’s voice and data traffic as it happens in your environment with real-time network activity/traffic. This makes the ‘pcap’ helpful in most troubleshooting cases as it closely simulates the real-time traffic in your network.

You could use Wireshark to get a packet capture.

Or, if you’d prefer to keep it simpler, you need do no more than just type a line of command. Our inbuilt sniffer tool does this job well. Navigate to your <VQManager_Home>/bin directory and execute this one-liner.

sniffer.exe -i=<Exact interface where VQManager listens> -cap.file=test.pcap -filter=”tcp || udp || vlan” -p=true -packet.count=10000

In case, you are running VQManager on a Linux machine, try this.

./sniffer -i=<Exact interface where VQManager listens> -cap.file=test.pcap -filter=”tcp || udp || vlan” -p=true -packet.count=10000

You have the ‘test.pcap‘ file ready in an instant. This will be present in the current directory(bin). Send it across to us for analysis and we will get back to you promptly with the required corrective measure.

Should you face a more serious problem, we may ask you for more. ) Well, that’s for another post.

Cheers,

Raj.

Comments

Post Comment