Wireshark · Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Minimum requirements in Windows?

[aferen@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Andrew C. Feren)]

Barb Binder <bbinder@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

> All,
>  We recently loaded Ethereal on a variety of laptops with varying
> amounts of memory and processor
> speeds. We noticed that it doesn't work on the really low end machines
> (eg, WIN 95 with 32 MB
> and 133 MHz). I have an opportunity to make a case to get higher end
> machines, but need
> to know what the minimum requirements for RAM and processor speed should
> be.
> We were able to successfully load ethereal and it saw packets, but when
> we stopped it, it would hang loading the file (didn't matter if we saved
> the output to a file or did it in real time).
> Worked fine on higher end laptops (Win 98 with 256 MB RAM and 333 MHz).
> So, any suggestions on minimum requirements? I couldn't find anything on
> the web page.
> Thanks!
> Barb

I don't have any minimum requirements, but what I have seen is that
even on well equipped machines the one thing that inevitably slows
ethereal down is leaving name resolution enabled.  This is
particularly true on PCs and isn't really ethereal's fault.

Try turning off network name resolution and see if you get acceptable
performance.

-- 
-Andrew Feren
 Cetacean Networks, Inc.
 Portsmouth, NH