Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] enquiry about ethereal and winpcap

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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2005 11:06:51 -0800
Alvin Lim wrote:


As i know ethereal is biuld upon on winPcap.
Ethereal uses WinPcap, on Windows, to do traffic capture; it uses libpcap on UN*X.
May i know, can ethereal or winpcap capture signal strength or noise of a wireless client. 

Ethereal can, but not on Windows...
...because WinPcap can't. WinPcap has a driver that connects to network adapter drivers, but it doesn't include any network adapter drivers - it relies on the capabilities of network adapter drivers in the system, and, as far as I know, none of the vendor-supplied or Microsoft-supplied drivers supplied for 802.11 network adapters on Windows support supplying radio information such as signal strength with captured packets.
Ethereal *can* do so on Linux, and on some BSD systems, with some adapters and drivers.