This is a static archive of our old Q&A Site. Please post any new questions and answers at ask.wireshark.org.

Wireless Connection Problem

0

Sir I have data dongle(wireless device) to provide wireless internet on my laptop. Can I use wireshark to see the data packet going and coming through my laptop via this data dongle. I tried but in Interface in wireshark it doesnot display wireless connection. Please guide me to see wireless connection in wireshark.

Piyush Sharma

This question is marked "community wiki".

asked 29 Sep '13, 23:58

PEEYUSH's gravatar image

PEEYUSH
11112
accept rate: 0%


One Answer:

0

Sir I have data dongle(wireless device) to provide wireless internet on my laptop.
tried but in Interface in wireshark it doesnot display wireless connection.

There are two possibilities (or more ;-))

  1. You inserted the USB device after you booted the PC and/or started Wireshark (depends on the way you installed WinPcap)
  2. The USB device driver creates a PPP interface

Regarding Nr. 1:

In that case WinPcap, the library and system service used by Wireshark, does not know about the new interface. Please restart the NPF service while the device is connected to your system.

As administrator (elevated DOS box) run

sc stop npf
sc start npf
dumpcap -D -M

Do you see the interface in the list of interfaces, that dumpcap printed?

If yes: Problem solved.
If no: goto 2.

See also a similar question:

http://ask.wireshark.org/questions/16299/capture-packets-with-zte-hspa-modem-mf195

Regarding Nr. 2:

WinPcap does not support PPP interfaces, and thus you cannot capture data with Wireshark on that interface.

http://www.winpcap.org/misc/faq.htm#Q-5

You can try Microsoft Network Monitor.

Regards
Kurt

answered 30 Sep '13, 15:07

Kurt%20Knochner's gravatar image

Kurt Knochner ♦
24.8k1039237
accept rate: 15%

MS Network Monitor has been recently superseded by Message Analyzer. I haven't checked to see if MS are still making Network Monitor available.

(01 Oct '13, 01:44) grahamb ♦

Thanks for the hint. Network Monitor is still there, and there is no real reason to remove that tool. We will see. Do you work with Message Analyzer? What do you think about it?

(01 Oct '13, 01:51) Kurt Knochner ♦

I fired up the beta for about 15 seconds, and was repulsed by the UI. Haven't looked at it since.

(01 Oct '13, 02:05) grahamb ♦

for about 15 seconds

duh... that's long ;-))

Well, according to the title of his blog entry, that guy from Microsoft thinks network capture is (already) dead

http://blogs.technet.com/b/messageanalyzer/archive/2013/03/04/network-capture-is-dead.aspx

I won't go that far, but there are (will be) some challenges for network capturing. See my NSA/crypto question.

(01 Oct '13, 03:03) Kurt Knochner ♦

Kind of misleading headline considering MA will still capture from NDIS amongst many other sources.

(01 Oct '13, 04:05) grahamb ♦