Subject: [AAA-WG]: New Ethereal Dissector Available

From: David Frascone <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 21:13:52 -0600

I have updated the Ethereal dissector for Diameter.  Ethereal is a graphical
network packet analyzer.  Think of it as tcpdump or snoop on steroids.  It
not only captures the packets, but also displays them graphically, letting
you walk through each AVP.

I use Ethereal a *lot* when I'm debugging Diameter traffic.

The new version (checked into the CVS repository today) will work with the
current draft over TCP.  SCTP is *not* supported, but probably will be in the
next week or two.

Its only shortcoming is TCP.  Under heavy traffic,  TCP will pack multiple
requests into a single TCP packet, and even fragment requests.  The Diameter
dissector in Ethereal assumes one packet per TCP packet.  So, it is great
for debugging normal request-reply messages, but has problems with floods
of packets (like with the Sun Ping Extension)

For instructions on getting the CVS tree, go to http://www.ethereal.com

Let me know if you have any questions, or any problems with the Diameter
dissector in Ethereal.

Later,

--Dave