Hi *,

We are proud to present the first non-beta version of The Gobbler. The
Gobbler is a software package designed to grab packets from an Ethernet 
network and present them in a human-readable form. The Gobbler recognises
TCP/IP, IPX and several other types of packets.

Filters can be set to select a portion of total network load, and
groups of filters can be saved to file for later use. Filters can be
set on source, destination, protocol, contents, device number and packet
length. Packet, Start and Stop filters are supported, all in both "positive"
and "negative" form.

The user interface of The Gobbler is window-oriented and should be
easy to use. The data presented by The Gobbler is of course for
experts only ;-).

The Gobbler should be run on a standard PC with an Ethernet card and a
packet driver supporting promiscous mode. Beware, there seem to
be a few packet drivers out there with bugs in the promiscous mode area.
We use Western Digital WD8003 cards, and they work fine. The Gobbler will
not influence the correct operation of the network or send any packets.

The Gobbler is a member of The Beholder network software family. Other
members are The Beholder, The Sage, NetView and NetCapt. The Gobbler
can be seen as the successor of NetView and NetCapt.

Many thanks to Tirza who has put The Gobbler together, continuing the work
of Ling, Dirk, Wim and myself.

You can get The Gobbler using anonymous ftp from:

    Host: dutepp0.et.tudelft.nl 
    Directory: Gobbler

The Gobbler is free, but if you use it, send us your comments, bugs,
suggestions and other stuff. If you use The Gobbler in any research
work, please put a reference in the acknowledgements.

We are not responsible for any use or misuse of The Gobbler or its
behaviour on your PC or network. However, we are still developing The
Beholder family, and will improve our research products as we continue
our work.

Send any mail to me, I will pass it on.


Jan


-- Ir. Jan van Oorschot.             --- Email: JPMvOorschot@et.tudelft.nl --
-- Data Network Performance Analysis Project                               --
-- CARDIT, Delft University of Technology ------------ Tel: (31)-15-786179 --
-- P.O.Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands ------ Fax: (31)-15-784898 --