Ethereal-dev: Re: [ethereal-dev] Need some words from you ...
On Wed, Jul 19, 2000 at 07:17:09PM +0900, Richard Sharpe wrote:
> OK,
>
> now that I have the structural parts of docbook behaving for me so I can
> produce a document, I need some content.
>
> Could those who have developed a dissector tell me a little about how you
> came upon Ethereal, and what motivated you to start working on Ethereal?
At the hospital where I used to work, I used Sniffer and LanAlyzer to
figure out token-ring and NetWare problems. Neither product by itself
was what I really wanted. Also, I wanted to be able to run a sniffer from
my workstation, which was Linux. There was no good sniffer for Unix.
I started work on a Perl-based protocol decoder. I used tcpdump to record
packets, and Perl to read and dissect the trace files. The program would decode
token-ring and NetWare-related packets to stdout.
Then when I saw Gerald's announcement for Ethereal 0.2.0 on Freshmeat, and
easily added token-ring support to it. Other open-source "sniffer" programs
tend to be designed with only ethernet in mind; I'm glad Gerald's design
was open enough to allow other link layers.
>From then on, I started using Ethereal on Linux whenever possible. As
time advanced and Ethereal progressed, I had to use LanAlyzer and Sniffer less and less.
--gilbert
