Introduction

license keys or fees or such. In addition, all source code is freely available under the GPL. Because of that, it is very easy for people to add new protocols to Ethereal, either as plugins, or built into the source, and they often do!

1.1.8. What Ethereal is not

Here are some things Ethereal does not provide:

Ethereal isn't an intrusion detection system. It will not warn you when someone does strange things on your network that he/she isn't allowed to do. However, if strange things happen, Ether- eal might help you figure out what is really going on.

Ethereal will not manipulate things on the network, it will only "measure" things from it. Ethere- al doesn't send packets on the network or do other active things (except for name resolutions, but even that can be disabled).

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Lucent Technologies manual What Ethereal is not