Title: Message
John,
 
> I'm going to merge files from 
captures on multiple interfaces.  
> 
Unfortunately I have some duplicates appearing in the traces I am 
merging.
> Has anyone seen any utility to 
do duplicate packet removal ?
 
 
I have tinkered with this sort of problem when 
comparing two traces of the same task taken from client and 
server. I was more interested in what sort of packets were 
being delayed in 
transmission. My naive solution 
would be to: 
 
- mung 
the output of both files using tethereal -x and generate a single line of text 
per frame
- 
fudge the timestamps of one of the trace files so that traces are aligned 
properly
- sort and pipe the output through 
uniq
- 
un-mung back into a suitable format for text2pcap to read.
 
But 
that isn't going to work in general 
- How do you ensure that the real world clocks are 
synced for two traces?
- How much of fudge factor is needed to comparing the timestamps of 
frames in the two traces?
- If 
trace 1 sees 2 pings to an IP address and trace 2 sees 3. How do you decide 
whether there were 3, 4 or 5 (or 8!) pings 
really?
  
- What if trace 1 says packet A arrived before B 
and trace 2 says B arrived before A? 
 
It may be easier to advise you if we understood what 
sort of packets were being duplicated? Eg is it MAC level broadcasts, RIP 
updates etc, HSRP hellos?  
 
 
Alistair
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