Summary

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Ethereal’s compatibility with other sniffers is by far one of its greatest strengths. The use of the libpcap packet driver makes it extremely compatible with other products that are also libpcap-based. There may even be some compatible products that we don’t know about! The development of the wiretap library shows great promise. It has already given Ethereal its significant ability to read and process capture files from a number of non-libpcap sources. Future wiretap development will continue to have a big influence on Ethereal and its features.

In this chapter we gave several examples of products and utilities that are compatible with Ethereal. That number will continue to grow as Ethereal matures and new products are developed. Ethereal’s compatibility encourages the use of many different means of collecting and analyzing data. You should make use of the tools and utilities that you have to make troubleshooting easier and most efficient. Most importantly, if you come across a new tool that you find is compatible with Ethereal, or one that should be, let the development team know about it!

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