Ethereal-users: [Ethereal-users] When does Ethereal timestamp packets?

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From: "Williams, Chris" <christopher.williams@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 15:32:01 -0500
I'm not exactly sure how to phrase this question since I'm new to networking issues, but I hope you can see where I'm going.  I'm trying to verify the performance of a real-time communications program and I would like to know when packets are transmitted and received, within the order of milliseconds.  We've seen results from Ethereal that show unexpected, discrete patterns of packets.  In trying to explain this phenomenon, I was wondering if the Ethereal timestamp represents the instant the packet is received or some later time, can the CPU loading or the changing of global threads effects these timestamps? When receiving a constant stream of packets does the network driver buffer up packets until they can be serviced which would affect the timestamp, or is there some other networking issue that I haven't though of?
 
I would appreciate any expertise that can be offered.
 
Best Regards,
Chris Williams