Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Wireshark for Android
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From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:34:15 -0700
On Apr 22, 2013, at 3:12 AM, Vladimir Bondar <vladimir91.bondar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I'm a student who wants to take a part in Wireshark for Android developing.
> I have just read about that, and I have a question does it work only with RTL 8187 adapter?

libpcap can be compiled for Android; that's what Wireshark would use for Android, just as it uses libpcap or WinPcap on other OSes.

The only way in which libpcap knows about particular Wi-Fi adapters is in code it uses to put adapters into monitor mode if the driver is *not* a mac80211 driver; I *suspect* the drivers for adapters used on Android machines are new enough that they're mac80211 drivers.

If you're only trying to capture traffic to and from the Android machine, the adapter and driver shouldn't matter.

If you're trying to capture "third-party" traffic, the adapter and driver will have to support monitor mode.  I doubt that the only adapter used on Android machines for which monitor mode works is the RTL 8187.

Do you have some reason to believe it would work only with the RTL 8187?