What ethereal is not – Lucent Technologies Ethereal User Manual
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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).
Introduction
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