AVANU – Do Not Be Intimidated Using tcpdump

Product Tech Tips Index

Tcpdump is a highly useful utility from the Linux world when captures and displays Ethernet packets. It can help answer questions such as “Did my browser really reach that server?” and “Did it go through that router first?”. The WebMux has two ways to access tcpdump to see what packets may be entering or leaving the load balancer. The first is available when superuser has reached the command line shell with “ssh” or “telnet”, and the second is through a graphic interface.

Using tcpdump in the first fashion can be intimidating at first. The second can help you out. WebMux (Firmware v11+) has a page that allows the user to fill in a form to perform simple packet captures. It also prints out the command line that could be used to perform the same capture at the superuser’s shell. This command may be used as a guide to performing similar yet more complicated packet captures from the superuser’s shell.