5.4. Capture Files

Ethereal can read and write capture files in it's natural file format, the libpcap format, which is used by many other network capturing tools, e.g. tcpdump. In addition to this, as one of it's strengths, Ethereal can read/write files in many different file formats of other network capturing tools. The wiretap library, developed together with Ethereal, provides a general purpose interface to read/write all the file formats. If you need to add another capture file format, this is the place to start.