.TH plcsnif 1 "Mar 2014" "plc-utils-2.1.6" "Qualcomm Atheros Powerline Toolkit" .SH NAME plcsnif - Qualcomm Atheros AR7x00 Powerline Traffic Sniffer .SH SYNOPSIS .BR plcsnif .RI [ options ] .SH DESCRIPTION Enable or disable powerline packet sniffing on the local powerline device. Special PIB settings are required for this feature to work and special tools are required to interpret the output. This program is not for general Atheros customers. .PP This program is part of the Qualcomm Atheros Powerline Toolkit. See the \fBAPT\fR man page for an overview and installation instructions. .SH COMMENTS Enabling the sniffer mode on Atheros Powerline Devices will introduce high processor overheads on the device and flood the local Ethernet subnet with traffic destined for the local host. This may affect both local Ethernet and powerline data rates. Do not enable sniffer mode on powerline devices connected to operational powerline or Ethernet networks recklessly. .SH OPTIONS .TP .RB - d Dump sniffer data on the console. Sniffer data is printed as one or more hexadecimal fields seperated by one space. The first field is direction displayed as two hex digits. The next field is powerline device system time displayed as 16 hex digits. The next field is powerline beacon time displayed as 8 hex digits. The next field is frame control displayed as 32 hex digits. The last field is the beacon body displayed as 272 hex digits. .TP -\fBm \fImode\fR Enable, disable or inspect the powerline packet sniffer mode on the local powerline device. Valid modes are \fB0\fR=\fBoff\fR, \fB1\fR=\fBon\fR and \fB2\fR=\fBinspect\fR. .TP -\fBi\fR \fIinterface\fR Select the host Ethernet interface. All requests are sent via this host interface and only reponses received via this host interface are recognized. The default interface is \fBeth1\fR because most people use \fBeth0\fR as their principle network connection; however, if environment string "PLC" is defined then it takes precedence over the default interface. This option then takes precedence over either default. .TP .RB - q Suppresses normal progress and status messages. .TP .RB - v Print additional information on stdout. .TP -\fB?\fR, --\fBhelp\fR Print program help summary on stdout. This option takes precedence over other options on the command line. .TP -\fB!\fR, --\fBversion\fR Print program version information on stdout. This option takes precedence over other options on the command line. Use this option when sending screen dumps to Atheros Technical Support so that they know exactly which version of the Linux Toolkit you are using. .SH ARGUMENTS .TP .IR device The Ethernet hardware address of some powerline device. More than one address may be specified. If more than one address is specified then operations are performed on each device in turn. The default address is \fBlocal\fR. See \fBDEVICES\fR for information about symbolic device addresses. .SH DEVICES Powerline devices use Ethernet hardware addresses. Hardware addresses are 12 hexadecimal digits in upper, lower or mixed case. Individual octets may be separated by colons, for clarity, but not all octets need to be seperated. For example, "00b052000001", "00:b0:52:00:00:01" and "00b052:000001" are valid and equivalent. .PP The following addresses are special and may be expressed by name instead of number. .TP .BR all Equivalent to "broadcast", described next. .TP .BR broadcast A synonym for the standard Ethernet broadcast address, \fBFF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF\fR. All devices, whether local, remote or foreign will respond to this address. .TP .BR local A synonym for the Qualcomm Atheros vendor specific Local Management Address (LMA), \fB00:B0:52:00:00:01\fR. All local Atheros devices will recognize this address but remote and foreign devices will not. A remote device is any device at the far end of a powerline connection. A foreign device is any device not manufactured by Atheros. .SH DISCLAIMER Atheros HomePlug AV Vendor Specific Management Message structure and content is proprietary to Qualcomm Atheros, Ocala FL USA. Consequently, public information is not available. Qualcomm Atheros reserves the right to modify message structure or content in future firmware releases without any obligation to notify or compensate users of this program. .PP This program is provided for engineering purposes only and is not required for normal powerline device operation. Qualcomm Atheros shall not be responsible for any adverse consequences resulting from the use of this program in an operational environment by anyone for any reason. .SH EXAMPLES The following example enables the sniffer mode on all local powerline devices connected to interface \fBeth1\fR because the program default address is \fB00:B0:52:00:00:01\fR. Remote powerline devices are not affected. If you only want to enable sniffer mode on one local powerline device then specify the address on the command line. .PP # plcsnif -m 1 -i eth1 eth1 00:07:CB:E0:00:68 SNIFFER ON eth1 00:B0:52:DA:DA:01 SNIFFER ON .PP The program will return immediately but VS_SNIFFER.IND messages are continuously sent to the local host, in background, until the device is reset or the sniffer mode is diabled. You can use a packet sniffer, such as Wireshare, or run program \fBHPAV\fR or \fBsnif\fR in another console window, to observe the messages. Be sure to select the correct Ethernet interface. .PP The next example disables the sniffer mode on the local device \fB00:B0:52:DA:DA:01\fR connected to interface \fBeth1\fR. .PP # plcsnif -i eth1 -m 0 00:B0:52:DA:DA:01 eth1 00:B0:52:DA:DA:01 SNIFFER OFF .PP The following example queries local devices to report their sniffer state. Observe that each local device, in this case, is in a different state. .PP # plcsnif -m 2 -i eth1 eth1 00:07:CB:E0:00:68 SNIFFER ON eth1 00:B0:52:DA:DA:01 SNIFFER OFF .PP The following example disables the sniffer state on all local powerline devices connected to interface \fBeth1\fR. The \fBlocal\fR keyword is shorthand for \fB00:B0:52:00:00:001\fR as in the DEVICES section. It is the default device address. .PP # plcsnif -m 0 -i eth1 local eth1 00:07:CB:E0:00:68 SNIFFER OFF eth1 00:B0:52:DA:DA:01 SNIFFER OFF .PP The following example prints sniffer data on the console. The fields in this example are direction, system time, beacon time, frame control and beacon data. Observe that data is displayed in little-endian format. .PP # plcsnif -d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arpc ( 1 ), .BR hpav ( 1 ) .SH CREDITS Charles Maier