SystemRequirements

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What you'll need to get Ethereal up and running ...

General Remarks

  • Ethereal won't benefit much from Multiprocessor/Hyperthread systems (except perhaps during an "Update list of packets in real time" capture, where the process capturing traffic runs in one process and the process dissecting and displaying packets runs in another process, and the two processes could run on two processors).

  • The values below are the minimum requirements and only "rules of thumb" for use on a moderately used network

  • Working with a busy network can easily produce huge memory and disk space usage! For example: Capturing on a fully saturated 100MBit/s Ethernet will produce ~ 750MBytes/min (XXX - someone with an exact value?)! Having a fast processor, lots of memory and disk space is a good idea here.

  • If Ethereal is running out of memory it crashes, see: KnownBugs/OutOfMemory for details and workarounds

Microsoft Windows

  • Windows 2000, XP Home or Pro (XP Pro recommended), Server 2003 (does XP Tablet PC or XP Media Center work too?)

  • 32-bit Pentium or alike (recommended: 400MHz or greater), 64-bit processors in WoW64 emulation, see remarks below

  • 128MB RAM (recommended: 256MBytes or greater)

  • 60MB available disk space (plus size of user's capture files, e.g. 100MB extra)

  • 800*600 (1280*1024 or higher recommended) resolution with at least 256 colors

  • A supported network card for capturing:

Remarks:

  • Windows 95, 98, ME and NT may or may not work. The developers will do what they can, but the libraries Ethereal depends on are no longer actively supporting these systems. According to [WWW]this bug report, the last version to work reliably with legacy Windows systems is 0.10.0.

  • Windows CE is not supported!

  • Multi monitor setups are supported but may behave a bit strangely

  • 64-bit processors run Ethereal in 32 bit emulation (called WoW64), at least WinPcap 3.2 alpha 1 is required for that

Discussion

Is there a way to give some recommendations of memory and disk usage for busy networks? Some examples might help to get an idea. - UlfLamping

Do at least some of the PC requirements/recommendations (Pentium or better, 128MB or more with 256MB or more recommended, 800*600/256 colors with 1280*1024 recommended) apply to other OSes (Linux, the BSDs, Solaris)? -Guy Harris

I had hoped that others might add that information, as I don't have much knowledge about the Unixes. - UlfLamping