5.5. Dissect packets

While Ethereal is loading packets from a file, each packet is dissected. Ethereal tries to detect what kind of packet it is and getting as much information from it as possible. In this run, only the information showed in the packet list pane is needed though.

As the user selects a specific packet in the packet list pane, this packet will be dissected again. This time, Ethereal tries to get every single piece of information and put it into the packet details pane then.