Wireshark 2.1.0 Release Notes


This is a semi-experimental release intended to test new features for Wireshark 2.2.

1. What is Wireshark?

Wireshark is the world’s most popular network protocol analyzer. It is used for troubleshooting, analysis, development and education.

2. What’s New

2.1. New and Updated Features

The following features are new (or have been significantly updated) since version 2.0.0:

  • You can now switch between between Capture and File Format dissection of the current capture file via the View menu in the Qt GUI.
  • You can now show selected packet bytes as ASCII, HTML, Image, ISO 8859-1, Raw, UTF-8, a C array, or YAML.
  • You can now use regular expressions in Find Packet and in the advanced preferences.
  • Name resolution for packet capture now supports asynchronous DNS lookups only. Therefore the "concurrent DNS resolution" preference has been deprecated and is a no-op. To enable DNS name resolution some build dependencies must be present (currently c-ares). If that is not the case DNS name resolution will be disabled (but other name resolution mechanisms, such as host files, are still available).
  • The byte under the mouse in the Packet Bytes pane is now highlighted.
  • TShark supports exporting PDUs via the -U flag.
  • The Windows and OS X installers now come with the "sshdump" and "ciscodump" extcap interfaces.
  • Most dialogs in the Qt UI now save their size and positions.
  • The Follow Stream dialog now supports UTF-16.
  • The Firewall ACL Rules dialog has returned.
  • The Flow (Sequence) Analysis dialog has been improved.

2.2. New File Format Decoding Support

Wireshark is able to display the format of some types of files (rather than displaying the contents of those files). This is useful when you’re curious about, or debugging, a file and its format. To open a capture file (such as PCAP) in this mode specify "MIME Files Format" as the file’s format in the Open File dialog.

New files that Wireshark can open in this mode include:

2.3. New Protocol Support

Apache Cassandra - CQL version 3.0, Bachmann bluecom Protocol, Bluetooth Pseudoheader for BR/EDR, CISCO ERSPAN3 Marker, Edge Control Protocol (ECP), Ericsson IPOS Kernel Packet Header Dissector Added (IPOS), Extensible Control & Management Protocol (eCMP), FLEXRAY Protocol dissector added (automotive bus), ISO 8583-1, ISO14443, ITU-T G.7041/Y.1303 Generic Framing Procedure (GFP), LAT protocol (DECNET), Metamako trailers, Nokia Intelligent Service Interface (ISI), Open Mobile Alliance Lightweight Machine to Machine TLV payload Added (LwM2M TLV), RTI TCP Transport Layer (RTITCP), STANAG 5602 SIMPLE, USB3 Vision Protocol (USB machine vision cameras), USBIP Protocol, UserLog Protocol, and Zigbee Protocol Clusters Dissectors Added (Closures Lighting General Measurement & Sensing HVAC Security & Safety)

2.4. Updated Protocol Support

Bluetooth OBEX dissector (btobex) was renamed to Obex Dissector (obex), allow to DecodeAs it over USB, TCP and UDP.

A preference was added to TCP dissector for handling IPFIX process information. It has been disabled by default.

2.5. New and Updated Capture File Support

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2.6. New and Updated Capture Interfaces support

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2.7. Major API Changes

The libwireshark API has undergone some major changes:

  • The address macros (e.g., SET_ADDRESS) have been removed. Use the (lower case) functions of the same names instead.
  • "old style" dissector functions (that don’t return number of bytes used) have been replaced in name with the "new style" dissector functions.
  • tvb_get_string and tvb_get_stringz have been replaced with tvb_get_string_enc and tvb_get_stringz_enc respectively.

3. Getting Wireshark

Wireshark source code and installation packages are available from https://www.wireshark.org/download.html.

3.1. Vendor-supplied Packages

Most Linux and Unix vendors supply their own Wireshark packages. You can usually install or upgrade Wireshark using the package management system specific to that platform. A list of third-party packages can be found on the download page on the Wireshark web site.

4. File Locations

Wireshark and TShark look in several different locations for preference files, plugins, SNMP MIBS, and RADIUS dictionaries. These locations vary from platform to platform. You can use About→Folders to find the default locations on your system.

5. Known Problems

Dumpcap might not quit if Wireshark or TShark crashes. (Bug 1419)

The BER dissector might infinitely loop. (Bug 1516)

Capture filters aren’t applied when capturing from named pipes. (Bug 1814)

Filtering tshark captures with read filters (-R) no longer works. (Bug 2234)

Application crash when changing real-time option. (Bug 4035)

Packet list rows are oversized. (Bug 4357)

Wireshark and TShark will display incorrect delta times in some cases. (Bug 4985)

Wireshark should let you work with multiple capture files. (Bug 10488)

Dell Backup and Recovery (DBAR) makes many Windows applications crash, including Wireshark. (Bug 12036)

6. Getting Help

Community support is available on Wireshark’s Q&A site and on the wireshark-users mailing list. Subscription information and archives for all of Wireshark’s mailing lists can be found on the web site.

Official Wireshark training and certification are available from Wireshark University.

7. Frequently Asked Questions

A complete FAQ is available on the Wireshark web site.

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