Wireshark · Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Slightly OT: Time precision

["mail.ag" <mail.ag@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Daniele Brevi wrote:
> Hi at all,
>
> I'm try to understand the precision of packets timestamp that I have
> captured with ethereal.
> Googling I undestand that this value doesn't depend by etheral but by
> libpcap. But also this depend by timestamp added to packet by BPF. This
> value (if I understand better) is read (in unix system) by gettimeofday().
> So if all this it's true the precision of timestamp is the same of
> gettimeofday() that should be 1 microsencond. This also because 'my' traffic
> has not very high throughput and so my PC 'doesn't find difficult' capture
> and timestamp packets.
>
> It seems my reasoning is right?
>
> Thanks in advance and sorry for english;-)
>
> Daniele
>
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Granted there is a bit of marketing involved, but this paper seems to 
give a good overview of packet capture time stamping:
http://endace.com/library_Technical.htm

(these guys sell high performance cards)

HTH


Andrew