Wireshark · Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG Promiscuous mode

[Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ulf Lamping wrote:

> That will depend on the WinPcap and the card's driver version you use.

...although he says his friends are using the same card and driver.  If 
that's true, the problem isn't the driver version; it *might* be the 
WinPcap version, if the machines are running different versions of WinPcap.

*Perhaps* it's XP Home vs. XP Professional, although I suspect not (I 
suspect most if not all of the Home vs. Professional differences are in 
the user-mode code, rather than the lower-level kernel-mode code that 
implements NDIS and hence implements turning promiscuous mode on and off).

The problem could also be the version of the wireless adapter itself - 
in later versions of the adapter, Intel might have changed the hardware 
or, if the card has firmware, the firmware on the adapter, so, for 
example, his card and his friends' cards might be running different 
firmware versions.

> But please note that the promiscuous mode doesn't make a big difference
> as you won't see a lot more than without it...

Perhaps, perhaps not.  I *do* see third-party traffic in promiscuous 
mode with the Cisco 350 card on my Inspiron 8000 running FreeBSD 4.6. 
(I also see it in monitor mode, but I don't need monitor mode to see 
third-party traffic.)