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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] DOCSIS is not one of the DLTs supported by this device).

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 12:28:05 -0800

On Dec 4, 2009, at 8:50 PM, Scott and Germaine James wrote:

DOCSIS is not one of the DLTs supported by this device).
 what is this about

Is that a message that was printed when you ran tcpdump? (The equivalent message in Wireshark/TShark/dumpcap is "That DLT isn't one of the DLTs supported by this device".)

If so, was it because you tried capturing on, for example, a Wi-Fi (802.11) device with "-y DOCSIS"?

If so, that's not supported. "-y DOCSIS" is supported on Ethernet because some Cisco cable modem head-end equipment can put DOCSIS frames onto an Ethernet cable plugged into the device; what it does is uses the very low-level framing mechanism of Ethernet, but, instead of putting Ethernet frames, with a standard Ethernet header, on the cable, it puts DOCSIS frames on the cable. That flag causes the link- layer type of the capture to be marked as DOCSIS, not Ethernet, so that the capture will be properly interpreted by, for example, Wireshark and TShark. Cisco doesn't, as far as I know, support putting DOCSIS frames onto 802.11 networks in that fashion.