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How do I determine if a packet is a broadcast packet?

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I know nothing about networking. I was asked to find a percentage of all packets that are broadcast packets from a capture I did. Can someone tell me how to do that please?

asked 19 Feb '12, 12:58

sssddd's gravatar image

sssddd
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edited 20 Feb '12, 09:27

multipleinterfaces's gravatar image

multipleinte...
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One Answer:

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Maybe you might want to look for packets that have either a MAC address of FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF or an IP address of 255.255.255.255 - but that might not include all broadcast messages, because for that you would need to know all subnets and subnets masks to be able to determine what the broadcast address of a subnet is. For example 172.16.0.255 could be a broadcast if the network is 172.16.0.0/24, but if it is 172.16.0.0/16 it isn't.

By the way, this looks like a lot of questions coming from some sort of homework assignment, so if that is the case I would advise you to study and find the answers for yourself ;-)

answered 19 Feb '12, 13:35

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Jasper ♦♦
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