argus-*-rc.30 on the server

Carter Bullard carter at qosient.com
Mon Oct 2 13:14:55 EDT 2006


Then we're good to go.  I've fixed the OpenBSD define.  Anything else?
Carter

On Oct 2, 2006, at 12:44 PM, Peter Van Epp wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 12:30:42PM -0400, Carter Bullard wrote:
>> Hey Peter,
>> Hmmmm, OK, so argus-3.0 is currently reporting the libpcap reported
>> on-the-wire
>> bytes, and argus-2.x is reporting the corrected bytes, adjusted by
>> calculating
>> the difference between the length reported in the ip header and the
>> remainder
>> of the packet length after parsing the encapsulation header.
>>
>> So which is right?  Its clear that libpcap reports larger packets
>> than are
>> actually written by the sender.  If I pick out one of your tcp
>> connections,
>> say the one with source port 40669, the last packet in your trace  
>> is an
>> IPv4 based TCP ACK packet over ethernet, yet libpcap sez that the on-
>> the-wire packet length is 60 bytes.  That packet should be 54  
>> bytes, 14
>> ethernet hdr + 20 IP header + 20 TCP header.
>>
>> I think this is a known problem with libpcap, so ...., I took out the
>> 'correction' code in argus-3.0 thinking that we should not be  
>> sensitive
>> to packet contents for stating what the packet length is (since  
>> this can
>> be faked).   Although libpcap is incorrect, should we stay with it or
>> should
>> we correct the length?
>>
>> Opinions?
>>
>> Carter
>>
>
> 	Ah! our friend ethernet padding! I think for most things the  
> libpcap value is probably better. Whats happening is there
> is a minimum packet size of 60 bytes on the wire and the ethernet  
> cards will pad an underlength packet out to 60 bytes. For
> rate calculations this is the count we would like to use, because  
> it is actual bytes on the wire and indicates how long the
> packet really was on the wire for utilization purposes so I'd vote  
> for leaving the value at the libpcap value.
>
> Peter Van Epp / Operations and Technical Support
> Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. Canada
>

Carter Bullard
CEO/President
QoSient, LLC
150 E. 57th Street Suite 12D
New York, New York 10022

+1 212 588-9133 Phone
+1 212 588-9134 Fax


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