5 <section id="PreForeword">
6 <title>Foreword</title>
8 Ethereal is one of those programs that many network managers would love
9 to be able to use, but they are often prevented from getting what they
10 would like from Ethereal because of the lack of documentation.
13 This document is part of an effort by the Ethereal team to improve the
14 usability of Ethereal.
17 We hope that you find it useful, and look forward to your comments.
21 <section id="PreAudience">
22 <title>Who should read this document?</title>
24 The intended audience of this book is anyone using Ethereal.
27 This book will explain all the basics and also some of the advanced features
28 that Ethereal provides. As Ethereal has become a very complex program since
29 the early days, not every feature of Ethereal might be explained in this
33 This book is not intended to explain network sniffing in general and it will
34 not provide details about specific network protocols. However, as this book
35 evolves in time (like Ethereal itself), this might change in the future.
38 By reading this book, you will learn how to install Ethereal, how to use the
39 basic elements of the graphical user interface (like the menu) and what's
40 behind some of the advanced features that are maybe not that obvious at first
42 hopefully guide you around some common problems that frequently appears for
43 new (and sometimes even advanced) users of Ethereal.
48 <title>Acknowledgements</title>
50 The authors would like to thank the whole Ethereal team for their
51 assistance. In particular, the authors would like to thank:
55 Gerald Combs, for initiating the Ethereal project and funding to
56 do this documentation.
61 Guy Harris, for many helpful hints and a great deal of patience
62 in reviewing this document.
67 Gilbert Ramirez, for general encouragement and helpful hints along
74 The authors would also like to thank the following people for their
75 helpful feedback on this document:
79 Pat Eyler, for his suggestions on improving the example on
80 generating a backtrace.
85 Martin Regner, for his various suggestions and corrections.
90 Graeme Hewson, for a lot of grammatical corrections.
96 The authors would like to acknowledge those man page and README authors
97 for the ethereal project from who sections of this document borrow heavily:
101 Scott Renfro from whose <command>mergecap</command> man page
102 <xref linkend="AppToolsmergecap"/> is derived.
107 Ashok Narayanan from whose <command>text2pcap</command> man page
108 <xref linkend="AppToolstext2pcap"/> is derived.
113 Frank Singleton from whose <filename>README.idl2eth</filename>
114 <xref linkend="AppToolsidl2eth"/> is derived.
121 <section id="PreAbout">
122 <title>About this document</title>
124 This book was originally developed by
125 <ulink url="mailto:&AuthorEmail;">Richard Sharpe</ulink> with
126 funds provided from the Ethereal Fund. It was updated by
127 <ulink url="mailto:&AuthorEmail2;">Ed Warnicke</ulink> and more recently
128 redesigned and updated by <ulink url="mailto:&AuthorEmail3;">Ulf
132 It is written in DocBook/XML.
135 You will find some specially marked parts in this book:
137 <warning><title>This is a warning!</title>
139 You should pay attention to a warning, as otherwise data loss might occur.
142 <note><title>This is a note!</title>
144 A note will point you to common mistakes and things that might not be
148 <tip><title>This is a tip!</title>
150 Tips will be helpful for your everyday work using Ethereal.
155 <section id="PreDownload">
156 <title>Where to get the latest copy of this document?</title>
158 The latest copy of this documentation can always be found at:
159 <ulink url="&EtherealUsersGuidePage;"/>.
163 <section id="PreFeedback">
164 <title>Providing feedback about this document</title>
166 Should you have any feedback about this document, please send them
167 to the authors through <ulink url="mailto:&EtherealDevMailList;">&EtherealDevMailList;</ulink>.