tcpdump

On Unix-like operating systems, the tcpdump collects a raw dump of network traffic. This document covers the Linux version of tcpdump.

Tcpdump prints out a description of the contents of packets on a network interface that match the boolean expression specified on the command line. It can also be run with the -w flag, which causes it to save the packet data to a file for later analysis, or with the -r flag, which causes it to read from a saved packet file rather than to read packets from a network interface.

Tcpdump will, if not run with the -c flag, continue capturing packets until it is interrupted by a SIGINT signal (for example, when the user types the interrupt character, typically control-C) or a SIGTERM signal (typically generated with the kill command); if run with the -c flag, it will capture packets until it is interrupted by a SIGINT or SIGTERM signal or the specified number of packets have been processed.

When tcpdump finishes capturing packets, it will report counts of the following:

• packets "captured" (the number of packets that tcpdump has received and processed);
• packets "received by filter" (the meaning of this depends on the OS on which you're running tcpdump, and possibly on the way the OS was configured; if a filter was specified on the command line, on some OSes it counts packets regardless of whether they were matched by the filter expression and, even if they were matched by the filter expression, regardless of whether tcpdump has read and processed them yet; on other operating systems it counts only packets that were matched by the filter expression regardless of whether tcpdump has read and processed them yet, and on other OSes it counts only packets that were matched by the filter expression and were processed by tcpdump);
• packets "dropped by kernel" (this is the number of packets that were dropped, due to a lack of buffer space, by the packet capture mechanism in the OS on which tcpdump is running, if the OS reports that information to applications; if not, it will be reported as 0).

On platforms that support the SIGINFO signal, such as most BSD operating systems (including macOS X) and Digital/Tru64 UNIX, it will report those counts when it receives a SIGINFO signal (generated (for example) by typing the "status" character, typically control-T; although on some platforms, such as macOS X, the "status" character is not set by default, so you must set it with stty to use it) and will continue capturing packets.

Reading packets from a network interface may require that you have special privileges; see the pcap (3PCAP) manual for details. Reading a saved packet file doesn't require special privileges.

tcpdump [ -AbdDefhHIJKlLnNOpqRStuUvxX ] [ -B buffer_size ] [ -c count ] 
        [ -C file_size ] [ -G rotate_seconds ] [ -F file ] [ -i interface ] 
        [ -j tstamp_type ] [ -m module ] [ -M secret ] [ -r file ] 
        [ -s snaplen ] [ -T type ] [ -w file ] [ -W filecount ] 
        [ -E spi@ipaddr algo:secret,... ] [ -y datalinktype ] 
        [ -z postrotate-command ] [ -Z user ] [ expression ]

Options

tcpdump -l | tee dat

tcpdump -l > dat & tail -f dat

Output format

The output of tcpdump is protocol-dependent. The following gives a brief description and examples of most of the formats.

Link Level Headers

If the '-e' option is given, the link level header is printed out. On Ethernets, the source and destination addresses, protocol, and packet length are printed.

On FDDI networks, the '-e' option causes tcpdump to print the 'frame control' field, the source and destination addresses, and the packet length. (The 'frame control' field governs the interpretation of the rest of the packet. Normal packets (such as those containing IP datagrams) are 'async' packets, with a priority value between 0 and 7; for example, 'async4'. Such packets are assumed to contain an 802.2 Logical Link Control (LLC) packet; the LLC header is printed if it is not an ISO datagram or a so-called SNAP packet.

On Token Ring networks, the '-e' option causes tcpdump to print the 'access control' and 'frame control' fields, the source and destination addresses, and the packet length. As on FDDI networks, packets are assumed to contain an LLC packet. Regardless of whether the '-e' option is specified or not, the source routing information is printed for source-routed packets.

On 802.11 networks, the '-e' option causes tcpdump to print the 'frame control' fields, all of the addresses in the 802.11 header, and the packet length. As on FDDI networks, packets are assumed to contain an LLC packet.

Note: The following description assumes familiarity with the SLIP compression algorithm described in RFC-1144.

On SLIP links, a direction indicator ("I" for inbound, "O" for outbound), packet type, and compression information are printed out. The packet type is printed first. The three types are ip, utcp, and ctcp. No further link information is printed for IP packets. For TCP packets, the connection identifier is printed following the type. If the packet is compressed, its encoded header is printed out. The special cases are printed out as *S+n and *SA+n, where n is the amount by which the sequence number (or sequence number and ack) has changed. If it is not a special case, zero or more changes are printed. A change is indicated by U (urgent pointer), W (window), A (ack), S (sequence number), and I (packet ID), followed by a delta (+n or -n), or a new value (=n). Finally, the amount of data in the packet and compressed header length are printed.

For example, the following line shows an outbound compressed TCP packet, with an implicit connection identifier; the ack has changed by 6, the sequence number by 49, and the packet ID by 6; there are 3 bytes of data and 6 bytes of compressed header:

O ctcp * A+6 S+49 I+6 3 (6)

ARP/RARP packets

Arp/Rarp output shows the type of request and its arguments. The format is intended to be self explanatory. Here is a short sample taken from the start of an 'rlogin' from host rtsg to host csam:

arp who-has csam tell rtsg arp reply csam is-at CSAM

The first line says that rtsg sent an arp packet asking for the Ethernet address of Internet host csam. Csam replies with its Ethernet address (in this example, Ethernet addresses are in caps and Internet addresses in lower case).

This would look less redundant if we had done tcpdump -n:

arp who-has 128.3.254.6 tell 128.3.254.68 
arp reply 128.3.254.6 is-at 02:07:01:00:01:c4

If we had done tcpdump -e, the fact that the first packet is broadcast and the second is point-to-point would be visible:

RTSG Broadcast 0806 64: arp who-has csam tell rtsg 
CSAM RTSG 0806 64: arp reply csam is-at CSAM

For the first packet this says the Ethernet source address is RTSG, the destination is the Ethernet broadcast address, the type field contained hex 0806 (type ETHER_ARP) and the total length was 64 bytes.

TCP packets

Note: The following description assumes familiarity with the TCP protocol described in RFC-793. If you are not familiar with the protocol, neither this description nor tcpdump will be of much use to you.

The general format of a tcp protocol line is:

src > dst: flags data-seqno ack window urgent options

Src and dst are the source and destination IP addresses and ports. Flags are some combination of S (SYN), F (FIN), P (PUSH), R (RST), U (URG), W (ECN CWR), E (ECN-Echo) or '.' (ACK), or 'none' if no flags are set. data-seqno describes the portion of sequence space covered by the data in this packet (see example below). ack is sequence number of the next data expected the other direction on this connection. window is the number of bytes of receive buffer space available the other direction on this connection. urg indicates there is 'urgent' data in the packet. Options are tcp options enclosed in angle brackets (e.g., ).

Src, dst and flags are always present. The other fields depend on the contents of the packet's tcp protocol header and are output only if appropriate.

Here is the opening portion of an rlogin from host rtsg to host csam.

rtsg.1023 > csam.login: S 768512:768512(0) win 4096csam.login > rtsg.1023: S 947648:947648(0) ack 768513 win 4096rtsg.1023 > csam.login: . ack 1 win 4096
rtsg.1023 > csam.login: P 1:2(1) ack 1 win 4096
csam.login > rtsg.1023: . ack 2 win 4096
rtsg.1023 > csam.login: P 2:21(19) ack 1 win 4096
csam.login > rtsg.1023: P 1:2(1) ack 21 win 4077
csam.login > rtsg.1023: P 2:3(1) ack 21 win 4077 urg 1
csam.login > rtsg.1023: P 3:4(1) ack 21 win 4077 urg 1

The first line says that tcp port 1023 on rtsg sent a packet to port login on csam. The S indicates that the SYN flag was set. The packet sequence number was 768512 and it contained no data. The notation is 'first:last(nbytes)' which means 'sequence numbers first up to but not including last that is nbytes bytes of user data'. There was no piggy-backed ack, the available receive window was 4096 bytes and there was a max-segment-size option requesting an mss of 1024 bytes.

Csam replies with a similar packet except it includes a piggy-backed ack for rtsg's SYN. Rtsg then acks csam's SYN. The '.' means the ACK flag was set. The packet contained no data so there is no data sequence number. Note that the ack sequence number is a small integer. The first time tcpdump sees a tcp 'conversation', it prints the sequence number from the packet. On subsequent packets of the conversation, the difference between the current packet's sequence number and this initial sequence number is printed. This means that sequence numbers after the first can be interpreted as relative byte positions in the conversation's data stream (with the first data byte each direction being '1'). The '-S' will override this feature, causing the original sequence numbers to be output.

On the 6th line, rtsg sends csam 19 bytes of data (bytes 2 through 20 in the rtsg → csam side of the conversation). The PUSH flag is set in the packet. On the 7th line, csam says it's received data sent by rtsg up to but not including byte 21. Most of this data is apparently sitting in the socket buffer since csam's receive window has gotten 19 bytes smaller. Csam also sends one byte of data to rtsg in this packet. On the 8th and 9th lines, csam sends two bytes of urgent, pushed data to rtsg.

If the snapshot was small enough that tcpdump didn't capture the full TCP header, it interprets as much of the header as it can and then reports "[|tcp]" to indicate the remainder could not be interpreted. If the header contains a bogus option (one with a length that's either too small or beyond the end of the header), tcpdump reports it as "[bad opt]" and does not interpret any further options (since it's impossible to tell where they start). If the header length indicates options are present but the IP datagram length is not long enough for the options to actually be there, tcpdump reports it as "[bad hdr length]".

Capturing TCP packets with particular flag combinations (SYN-ACK, URG-ACK, etc.)

There are 8 bits in the control bits section of the TCP header:

CWR | ECE | URG | ACK | PSH | RST | SYN | FIN

Let's assume that we want to watch packets used in establishing a TCP connection. Recall that TCP uses a 3-way handshake protocol when it initializes a new connection; the connection sequence with regard to the TCP control bits is

1. Caller sends SYN
2. Recipient responds with SYN, ACK
3. Caller sends ACK

Now we're interested in capturing packets that have only the SYN bit set (Step 1). Note that we don't want packets from step 2 (SYN-ACK), a plain initial SYN. What we need is a correct filter expression for tcpdump.

Recall the structure of a TCP header without options:

       0                              15                              31
       -----------------------------------------------------------------
       |          source port          |       destination port        |
       -----------------------------------------------------------------
       |                        sequence number                        |
       -----------------------------------------------------------------
       |                     acknowledgment number                     |
       -----------------------------------------------------------------
       |  HL   | rsvd  |C|E|U|A|P|R|S|F|        window size            |
       -----------------------------------------------------------------
       |         TCP checksum          |       urgent pointer          |
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

A TCP header usually holds 20 octets of data, unless options are present. The first line of the graph contains octets 0 - 3, the second line shows octets 4 - 7 etc.

Starting to count with 0, the relevant TCP control bits are contained in octet 13:

        0             7|             15|             23|             31
       ----------------|---------------|---------------|----------------
       |  HL   | rsvd  |C|E|U|A|P|R|S|F|        window size            |
       ----------------|---------------|---------------|----------------
       |               |  13th octet   |               |               |

Let's have a closer look at octet no. 13:

                       |               |
                       |---------------|
                       |C|E|U|A|P|R|S|F|
                       |---------------|
                       |7   5   3     0|

These are the TCP control bits that are of interest. We have numbered the bits in this octet from 0 to 7, right to left, so the PSH bit is bit number 3, while the URG bit is number 5.

Recall that we want to capture packets with only SYN set. Let's see what happens to octet 13 if a TCP datagram arrives with the SYN bit set in its header:

                       |C|E|U|A|P|R|S|F|
                       |---------------|
                       |0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0|
                       |---------------|
                       |7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0|

Looking at the control bits section we see that only bit number 1 (SYN) is set.

Assuming that octet number 13 is an 8-bit unsigned integer in network byte order, the binary value of this octet is

00000010

and its decimal representation is

         ^7    ^6    ^5    ^4    ^3    ^2    ^1    ^0
       0*2 + 0*2 + 0*2 + 0*2 + 0*2 + 0*2 + 1*2 + 0*2  =  2

We're almost done, because now we know that if only SYN is set, the value of the 13th octet in the TCP header, when interpreted as a 8-bit unsigned integer in network byte order, must be exactly 2.

This relationship can be expressed as:

tcp[13] == 2

We can use this expression as the filter for tcpdump to watch packets which have only SYN set:

tcpdump -i xl0 tcp[13] == 2

The expression says "let the 13th octet of a TCP datagram have the decimal value 2", which is exactly what we want.

Now, let's assume that we need to capture SYN packets, but we don't care if ACK or any other TCP control bit is set at the same time. Let's see what happens to octet 13 when a TCP datagram with SYN-ACK set arrives:

            |C|E|U|A|P|R|S|F|
            |---------------|
            |0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0|
            |---------------|
            |7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0|

Now bits 1 and 4 are set in the 13th octet. The binary value of octet 13 is

00010010

which translates to decimal 18:

         ^7    ^6    ^5    ^4    ^3    ^2    ^1    ^0
       0*2 + 0*2 + 0*2 + 1*2 + 0*2 + 0*2 + 1*2 + 0*2   = 18

Now we can't use 'tcp[13] == 18' in the tcpdump filter expression, because that would select only those packets that have SYN-ACK set, but not those with only SYN set. Remember that we don't care if ACK or any other control bit is set as long as SYN is set.

To achieve our goal, we need to logically AND the binary value of octet 13 with some other value to preserve the SYN bit. We know that we want SYN to be set in any case, so we'll logically AND the value in the 13th octet with the binary value of a SYN:

                 00010010 SYN-ACK              00000010 SYN
            AND  00000010 (we want SYN)   AND  00000010 (we want SYN)
                 --------                      --------
            =    00000010                 =    00000010

We see that this AND operation delivers the same result regardless whether ACK or another TCP control bit is set. The decimal representation of the AND value as well as the result of this operation is 2 (binary 00000010), so we know that for packets with SYN set the following relation must hold true:

( ( value of octet 13 ) AND ( 2 ) ) == ( 2 )

This points us to the tcpdump filter expression

tcpdump -i xl0 'tcp & 2 == 2'

Some offsets and field values may be expressed as names rather than as numeric values. For example, tcp] may be replaced with tcp[tcpflags]. The following TCP flag field values are also available: tcp-fin, tcp-syn, tcp-rst, tcp-push, tcp-act, tcp-urg.

This can be demonstrated as:

tcpdump -i xl0 'tcp[tcpflags] & tcp-push != 0'

Note that you should use single quotes or a backslash in the expression to protect the AND ('&') special character from the shell.

UDP packets

UDP format is illustrated by this rwho packet:

actinide.who > broadcast.who: udp 84

This says that port who on host actinide sent a udp datagram to port who on host broadcast, the Internet broadcast address. The packet contained 84 bytes of user data.

Some UDP services are recognized (from the source or destination port number) and the higher level protocol information printed. In particular, Domain Name service requests (RFC-1034/1035) and Sun RPC calls (RFC-1050) to NFS.

UDP name server requests

Note: The following description assumes familiarity with the Domain Service protocol described in RFC-1035. If you are not familiar with the protocol, the following description will appear to be written in a strange foreign language that is neither musical nor charming.

Name server requests are formatted as

src > dst: id op? flags qtype qclass name (len)
h2opolo.1538 > helios.domain: 3+ A? ucbvax.berkeley.edu. (37)

Host h2opolo asked the domain server on helios for an address record (qtype=A) associated with the name ucbvax.berkeley.edu. The query id was '3'. The '+' indicates the recursion desired flag was set. The query length was 37 bytes, not including the UDP and IP protocol headers. The query operation was the normal one, Query, so the op field was omitted. If the op had been anything else, it would have been printed between the '3' and the '+'. Similarly, the qclass was the normal one, C_IN, and omitted. Any other qclass would have been printed immediately after the 'A'.

A few anomalies are checked and may result in extra fields enclosed in square brackets: If a query contains an answer, authority records or additional records section, ancount, nscount, or arcount are printed as '[na]', '[nn]' or '[nau]' where n is the appropriate count. If any of the response bits are set (AA, RA or rcode) or any of the 'must be zero' bits are set in bytes two and three, '[b2&3=x]' is printed, where x is the hex value of header bytes two and three.

UDP name server responses

Name server responses are formatted as

src > dst: id op rcode flags a/n/au type class data (len)
helios.domain > h2opolo.1538: 3 3/3/7 A 128.32.137.3 (273)
helios.domain > h2opolo.1537: 2 NXDomain* 0/1/0 (97)

In the first example, helios responds to query id 3 from h2opolo with 3 answer records, 3 name server records and 7 additional records. The first answer record is type A (address) and its data is Internet address 128.32.137.3. The total size of the response was 273 bytes, excluding UDP and IP headers. The op (Query) and response code (NoError) were omitted, as was the class (C_IN) of the A record.

In the second example, helios responds to query 2 with a response code of non-existent domain (NXDomain) with no answers, one name server and no authority records. The '*' indicates that the authoritative answer bit was set. Since there were no answers, no type, class or data were printed.

Other flag characters that might appear are '-' (recursion available, RA, not set) and '|' (truncated message, TC, set). If the 'question' section doesn't contain exactly one entry, '[nq]' is printed.

SMB/CIFS decoding

tcpdump now includes fairly extensive SMB/CIFS/NBT decoding for data on UDP/137, UDP/138 and TCP/139. Some primitive decoding of IPX and NetBEUI SMB data is also done.

By default, a fairly minimal decode is done, with a much more detailed decode done if -v is used. Be warned that with -v a single SMB packet may take up a page or more, so only use -v if you really want all the gory details.

NFS requests and replies

Sun NFS (Network File System) requests and replies are printed as:

src.xid > dst.nfs: len op args
src.nfs > dst.xid: reply stat len op results
sushi.6709 > wrl.nfs: 112 readlink fh 21,24/10.73165
wrl.nfs > sushi.6709: reply ok 40 readlink "../var"
sushi.201b > wrl.nfs:
144 lookup fh 9,74/4096.6878 "xcolors"
wrl.nfs > sushi.201b:
reply ok 128 lookup fh 9,74/4134.3150

In the first line, host sushi sends a transaction with id 6709 to wrl (note that the number following the src host is a transaction id, not the source port). The request was 112 bytes, excluding the UDP and IP headers. The operation was a readlink (read symbolic link) on file handle (fh) 21,24/10.73165. If one is lucky, as in this case, the file handle can be interpreted as a major,minor device number pair, followed by the inode number and generation number. Wrl replies 'ok' with the contents of the link.

In the third line, sushi asks wrl to lookup the name 'xcolors' in the directory file 9,74/4096.6878. Note that the data printed depends on the operation type. The format is intended to be self explanatory if read in conjunction with an NFS protocol spec.

If the -v (verbose) flag is given, additional information is printed. For example:

sushi.1372a > wrl.nfs:
148 read fh 21,11/12.195 8192 bytes @ 24576
wrl.nfs > sushi.1372a:
reply ok 1472 read REG 100664 ids 417/0 sz 29388

-v also prints the IP header TTL, ID, length, and fragmentation fields, which have been omitted from this example. In the first line, sushi asks wrl to read 8192 bytes from file 21,11/12.195, at byte offset 24576. Wrl replies 'ok'; the packet shown on the second line is the first fragment of the reply, and hence is only 1472 bytes long (the other bytes will follow in subsequent fragments, but these fragments do not have NFS or even UDP headers and so might not be printed, depending on the filter expression used). Because the -v flag is given, some of the file attributes (which are returned in addition to the file data) are printed: the file type ("REG", for regular file), the file mode (in octal), the uid and gid, and the file size. If the -v flag is given more than once, even more details are printed.

Note that NFS requests are very large and much of the detail won't be printed unless snaplen is increased. Try using '-s 192' to watch NFS traffic.

NFS reply packets do not explicitly identify the RPC operation. Instead, tcpdump keeps track of "recent" requests, and matches them to the replies using the transaction ID. If a reply does not closely follow the corresponding request, it might not be parsable.

AFS requests and replies

Transarc AFS (Andrew File System) requests and replies are printed as:

src.sport > dst.dport: rx packet-type
src.sport > dst.dport: rx packet-type service call call-name args
src.sport > dst.dport: rx packet-type service reply call-name args
elvis.7001 > pike.afsfs:
rx data fs call rename old fid 536876964/1/1 ".newsrc.new"
new fid 536876964/1/1 ".newsrc"
pike.afsfs > elvis.7001: rx data fs reply rename

In the first line, host elvis sends a RX packet to pike. This was a RX data packet to the fs (fileserver) service, and is the start of an RPC call. The RPC call was a rename, with the old directory file id of 536876964/1/1 and an old file name of '.newsrc.new', and a new directory file id of 536876964/1/1 and a new file name of '.newsrc'. The host pike responds with a RPC reply to the rename call (which was successful, because it was a data packet and not an abort packet).

In general, all AFS RPCs are decoded at least by RPC call name. Most AFS RPCs have at least some of the arguments decoded (generally only the 'interesting' arguments, for some definition of interesting).

The format is intended to be self-describing, but it will probably not be useful to people who are not familiar with the workings of AFS and RX.

If the -v (verbose) flag is given twice, acknowledgement packets and additional header information is printed, such as the RX call ID, call number, sequence number, serial number, and the RX packet flags.

If the -v flag is given twice, additional information is printed, such as the RX call ID, serial number, and the RX packet flags. The MTU negotiation information is also printed from RX ack packets.

If the -v flag is given three times, the security index and service id are printed.

Error codes are printed for abort packets, with the exception of Ubik beacon packets (because abort packets are used to signify a yes vote for the Ubik protocol).

Note that AFS requests are very large and many of the arguments won't be printed unless snaplen is increased. Try using '-s 256' to watch AFS traffic.

AFS reply packets do not explicitly identify the RPC operation. Instead, tcpdump keeps track of "recent" requests, and matches them to the replies using the call number and service ID. If a reply does not closely follow the corresponding request, it might not be parsable.

KIP AppleTalk (DDP in UDP)

AppleTalk DDP packets encapsulated in UDP datagrams are de-encapsulated and dumped as DDP packets (i.e., all the UDP header information is discarded). The file /etc/atalk.names is used to translate AppleTalk net and node numbers to names. Lines in this file have the form

number    name
1.254     ether
16.1      icsd-net
1.254.110 ace

The first two lines give the names of AppleTalk networks. The third line gives the name of a particular host a host is distinguished from a net by the 3rd octet in the number, a net number must have two octets and a host number must have three octets. The number and name should be separated by whitespace (blanks or tabs). The /etc/atalk.names file may contain blank lines or comment lines (lines starting with a '#').

AppleTalk addresses are printed in the form:

net.host.port
144.1.209.2 > icsd-net.112.220
office.2 > icsd-net.112.220
jssmag.149.235 > icsd-net.2

If the /etc/atalk.names doesn't exist or doesn't contain an entry for some AppleTalk host/net number, addresses are printed in numeric form. In the first example, NBP (DDP port 2) on net 144.1 node 209 is sending to whatever is listening on port 220 of net icsd node 112. The second line is the same except the full name of the source node is known ('office'). The third line is a send from port 235 on net jssmag node 149 to broadcast on the icsd-net NBP port (note that the broadcast address (255) is indicated by a net name with no host number - for this reason it's a good idea to keep node names and net names distinct in /etc/atalk.names).

NBP (name binding protocol) and ATP (AppleTalk transaction protocol) packets have their contents interpreted. Other protocols dump the protocol name (or number if no name is registered for the protocol) and packet size.

NBP packets are formatted like the following examples:

icsd-net.112.220 > jssmag.2: nbp-lkup 190: "=:LaserWriter@*"
jssmag.209.2 > icsd-net.112.220: nbp-reply 190: "RM1140:LaserWriter@*" 250
techpit.2 > icsd-net.112.220: nbp-reply 190: "techpit:LaserWriter@*" 186

The first line is a name lookup request for laserwriters sent by net icsd host 112 and broadcast on net jssmag. The nbp id for the lookup is 190. The second line shows a reply for this request (note that it has the same id) from host jssmag.209 saying that it has a laserwriter resource named "RM1140" registered on port 250. The third line is another reply to the same request saying host techpit has laserwriter "techpit" registered on port 186.

ATP packet formatting is demonstrated by the following example:

jssmag.209.165 > helios.132: atp-req  122660xae030001
helios.132 > jssmag.209.165: atp-resp 12266:0 (512) 0xae040000
helios.132 > jssmag.209.165: atp-resp 12266:1 (512) 0xae040000
helios.132 > jssmag.209.165: atp-resp 12266:2 (512) 0xae040000
helios.132 > jssmag.209.165: atp-resp 12266:3 (512) 0xae040000
helios.132 > jssmag.209.165: atp-resp 12266:4 (512) 0xae040000
helios.132 > jssmag.209.165: atp-resp 12266:5 (512) 0xae040000
helios.132 > jssmag.209.165: atp-resp 12266:6 (512) 0xae040000
helios.132 > jssmag.209.165: atp-resp*12266:7 (512) 0xae040000
jssmag.209.165 > helios.132: atp-req  12266<3,5>    0xae030001
helios.132 > jssmag.209.165: atp-resp 12266:3 (512) 0xae040000
helios.132 > jssmag.209.165: atp-resp 12266:5 (512) 0xae040000
jssmag.209.165 > helios.132: atp-rel  122660xae030001
jssmag.209.133 > helios.132: atp-req* 122670xae030002

Jssmag.209 initiates transaction id 12266 with host helios by requesting up to 8 packets (the ''). The hex number at the end of the line is the value of the 'userdata' field in the request. Helios responds with 8 512-byte packets. The ':[digit]' following the transaction id gives the packet sequence number in the transaction and the number in parens is the amount of data in the packet, excluding the atp header. The '*' on packet 7 indicates that the EOM bit was set.

jssmag.209 then requests that packets 3 & 5 be retransmitted. Helios resends them then jssmag.209 releases the transaction. Finally, jssmag.209 initiates the next request. The '*' on the request indicates that XO ('exactly once') was not set.

IP fragmentation

Fragmented Internet datagrams are printed as:

(frag id:size@offset+)
(frag id:size@offset)

The first form indicates there are more fragments. The second indicates this is the last fragment.

Id is the fragment id. Size is the fragment size (in bytes) excluding the IP header. Offset is this fragment's offset (in bytes) in the original datagram.

The fragment information is output for each fragment. The first fragment contains the higher level protocol header and the frag info is printed after the protocol info. Fragments after the first contain no higher level protocol header and the frag info is printed after the source and destination addresses. For example, here is part of an ftp from arizona.edu to lbl-rtsg.arpa over a CSNET connection that doesn't appear to handle 576 byte datagrams:

arizona.ftp-data > rtsg.1170: . 1024:1332(308) ack 1 win 4096 (frag 595a:328@0+)
arizona > rtsg: (frag 595a:204@328)
rtsg.1170 > arizona.ftp-data: . ack 1536 win 2560

There are a couple of things to note here: First, addresses in the 2nd line don't include port numbers. Because the TCP protocol information is all in the first fragment and we have no idea what the port or sequence numbers are when we print the later fragments. Second, the tcp sequence information in the first line is printed as if there were 308 bytes of user data when, in fact, there are 512 bytes (308 in the first frag and 204 in the second). If you are looking for holes in the sequence space or trying to match up acks with packets, this can fool you.

A packet with the IP don't fragment flag is marked with a trailing (DF).

Timestamps

By default, all output lines are preceded by a timestamp. The timestamp is the current clock time in the form hh:mm:ss.frac and is as accurate as the kernel's clock. The timestamp reflects the time the kernel first saw the packet. No attempt is made to account for the time lag between when the Ethernet interface removed the packet from the wire and when the kernel serviced the 'new packet' interrupt.

tcpdump host sundown

Prints all packets arriving at or departing from host sundown.

tcpdump host helios and \( hot or ace \)

Prints traffic between host helios and either hot or ace.

tcpdump ip host ace and not helios

Prints all IP packets between ace and any host except helios.

tcpdump 'gateway snup and (port ftp or ftp-data)'

Prints all ftp traffic through Internet gateway snup. Note that the expression is quoted to prevent the shell from interpreting the parentheses.

tcpdump ip and not net localnet

Prints traffic neither sourced from nor destined for local hosts. If you gateway to another network, this stuff should never make it onto your local network.

tcpdump 'tcp[tcpflags] & (tcp-syn|tcp-fin) != 0 and not src and dst net localnet'

Prints the start and end packets (the SYN and FIN packets) of each TCP conversation that involves a non-local host.

tcpdump 'tcp port 80 and (((ip[2:2] - ((ip[0]&0xf)<<2)) - ((tcp[12]&0xf0)>>2)) != 0)'

Prints all IPv4 HTTP packets to and from port 80. tcpdump will print only packets that contain data; not, for example, SYN and FIN packets and ACK-only packets.

tcpdump 'gateway snup and ip[2:2] > 576'

Prints IP packets longer than 576 bytes sent through gateway snup.

tcpdump 'ether[0] & 1 = 0 and ip[16] >= 224'

Prints IP broadcast or multicast packets that were not sent via Ethernet broadcast or multicast.

tcpdump 'icmp[icmptype] != icmp-echo and icmp[icmptype] != icmp-echoreply'

Prints all ICMP packets that are not echo requests/replies (i.e., not ping packets).