Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [ethereal-dev] AIX: gtk problem solved, now an ethereal problem

[Craig Rodrigues <rodrigc@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Nov 15, 1999 at 08:48:01PM +0100, Laurent Deniel wrote:
> > 
> > Now the ioctl() for BIOCSBLEN is called with a smaller value for v,
> > and things seem to work.....although all the messages I receive back
> > look like Token Ring packets now.
> > 
> > Can anyone tell me what BIOCSBLEN is, and what the correct value of v
> > should be?
> > 
> 
> It is for increasing the buffer size (can not be greater than BPF_MAXBUFSIZE)
> but might be also limited by the underlying network stack. I remember that
> AIX was the OS which has the smallest maximum socket buffer space by default
> (as compared to DU, HPUX, Solaris) and some other limitations as well :-). 
> So this problem could be related to the same sizing limitation (I do not have
> an AIX box here to check if it can be increased by kernel modification or
> network subsystem tuning).

This may be a stupid question, but where can I learn about
these low-level ioctl() functions, and the implementation of these
things at the kernel/network stack level?  I don't have a lot of
experience working in this area, and don't know where to look
for answers when I have questions (this mailing list has been pretty good. :)

The main reason I am interested in Ethereal is because I
am taking a night course in Networking Protocols at
Harvard (http://lab.dce.harvard.edu/extension/cscie131b/), and
want to learn more about how protocols really work.
Just by luck (or misfortune :) I use AIX at work.  Sometimes you learn
more when things don't work quite right and you have to fix them. :)

Thanks.
-- 
Craig Rodrigues        
http://www.gis.net/~craigr    
rodrigc@xxxxxxxxxxxx