Wireshark · Ethereal-users: RE: [Ethereal-users] Only Seeing Outgoing Packets

["Simon Bradley" <simonbrads@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Guys,

I think I may be able to answer my own question. I've just found this
sentence in the hub's documentation:

"Every port automatically operates at the proper speed, while the built-in
self-learning 10 to 100 Mbps bridge automatically discovers where each user
is and filters or forwards traffic accordingly."

So, the hub is in fact more clever than I thought. I don't know if it's a
true switch (I'm not 100% sure of the definitions here), but it seems to be
more than just a hub.

I'm guessing the incoming packets are being sent only to the router, and not
to the monitor laptop. Does it make sense that the hub would be able to do
this, considering the destination machines are not directly connected to the
hub?

The outgoing packets are being sent to the router as well as to the monitor
laptop, so I'm guessing the hub isn't able to figure out where these packets
should be sent for some reason. (If anyone can explain why, that would be
quite interesting, too.)

If anyone with a better understanding of network hardware (I'm more of a
software guy) can confirm my suspicions, I'd be grateful.

Meanwhile, I have a hub that's definitely ONLY a hub that I can try. I'll
let you know what happens with that (although it won't be till Monday that I
can get a hold of that).

Cheers,

Simon