tshark - Man Page

Dump and analyze network traffic

Examples (TL;DR)

Monitor everything on localhost: tshark
Only capture packets matching a specific capture filter: tshark -f 'udp port 53'
Only show packets matching a specific output filter: tshark -Y 'http.request.method == "GET"'
Decode a TCP port using a specific protocol (e.g. HTTP): tshark -d tcp.port==8888,http
Specify the format of captured output: tshark -T json|text|ps|…
Select specific fields to output: tshark -T fields|ek|json|pdml -e http.request.method -e ip.src
Write captured packet to a file: tshark -w path/to/file
Analyze packets from a file: tshark -r path/to/file.pcap

Synopsis

tshark [ -i <capture interface>|- ] [ -f <capture filter> ] [ -2 ] [ -r <infile> ] [ -w <outfile>|- ] [ options ] [ <filter> ]

tshark -G [ <report type> ] [ --elastic-mapping-filter <protocols> ] [ -C <profile> ]

tshark -h|--help

tshark -v|--version

TShark is a network protocol analyzer. It lets you capture packet data from a live network, or read packets from a previously saved capture file, either printing a decoded form of those packets to the standard output or writing the packets to a file. TShark's native capture file format is pcapng format, which is also the format used by Wireshark and various other tools.

Without any options set, TShark will work much like tcpdump. It will use the pcap library to capture traffic from the first available network interface and displays a summary line on the standard output for each received packet.

When run with the -r option, specifying a capture file from which to read, TShark will again work much like tcpdump, reading packets from the file and displaying a summary line on the standard output for each packet read. TShark is able to detect, read and write the same capture files that are supported by Wireshark. The input file doesn’t need a specific filename extension; the file format and an optional gzip, Zstandard, or LZ4 compression will be automatically detected. Near the beginning of the DESCRIPTION section of wireshark(1) or https://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages/wireshark.html is a detailed description of the way Wireshark handles this, which is the same way TShark handles this.

Compressed file support uses (and therefore requires) the zlib library. If the zlib library is not present when compiling TShark, it will be possible to compile it, but the resulting program will be unable to read compressed files. Similarly, LZ4 and ZStandard also require their respective libraries.

When displaying packets on the standard output, TShark writes, by default, a summary line containing the fields specified by the preferences file (which are also the fields displayed in the packet list pane in Wireshark), although if it’s writing packets as it captures them, rather than writing packets from a saved capture file, it won’t show the "frame number" field. If the -V option is specified, it instead writes a view of the details of the packet, showing all the fields of all protocols in the packet. If the -O option is specified, it will only show the full details for the protocols specified, and show only the top-level detail line for all other protocols. Use the output of "tshark -G protocols" to find the abbreviations of the protocols you can specify. If the -P option is specified with either the -V or -O options, both the summary line for the entire packet and the details will be displayed.

Packet capturing is performed with the pcap library. That library supports specifying a filter expression; packets that don’t match that filter are discarded. The -f option is used to specify a capture filter. The syntax of a capture filter is defined by the pcap library; this syntax is different from the display filter syntax described below, and the filtering mechanism is limited in its abilities.

Display filters in TShark, which allow you to select which packets are to be decoded or written to a file, are very powerful; more fields are filterable in TShark than in other protocol analyzers, and the syntax you can use to create your filters is richer. As TShark progresses, expect more and more protocol fields to be allowed in display filters. Display filters use the same syntax as display and color filters in Wireshark; a display filter is specified with the -Y option.

Display filters can be specified when capturing or when reading from a capture file. Note that capture filters are much more efficient than display filters, and it may be more difficult for TShark to keep up with a busy network if a display filter is specified for a live capture, so you might be more likely to lose packets if you’re using a display filter.

A capture or display filter can either be specified with the -f or -Y option, respectively, in which case the entire filter expression must be specified as a single argument (which means that if it contains spaces, it must be quoted), or can be specified with command-line arguments after the option arguments, in which case all the arguments after the filter arguments are treated as a filter expression. If the filter is specified with command-line arguments after the option arguments, it’s a capture filter if a capture is being done (i.e., if no -r option was specified) and a display filter if a capture file is being read (i.e., if a -r option was specified).

If the -w option is specified when capturing packets or reading from a capture file, TShark does not display packets on the standard output. Instead, it writes the packets to a capture file with the name specified by the -w option. Note that display filters are currently not supported when capturing and saving the captured packets.

If you want to write the decoded form of packets to a file, run TShark without the -w option, and redirect its standard output to the file (do not use the -w option).

If you want the packets to be displayed to the standard output and also saved to a file, specify the -P option in addition to the -w option to have the summary line displayed, specify the -V option in addition to the -w option to have the details of the packet displayed, and specify the -O option, with a list of protocols, to have the full details of the specified protocols and the top-level detail line for all other protocols to be displayed. If the -P option is used together with the -V or -O option, the summary line will be displayed along with the detail lines.

When writing packets to a file, TShark, by default, writes the file in pcapng format, and writes all of the packets it sees to the output file. The -F option can be used to specify the format in which to write the file. The list of available file formats is displayed by the -F option without a value. However, for a live capture, you can only specify a file format supported by dumpcap(1), viz. pcapng or pcap. The --compress option can be used to specify a compression method as well; the list of supported compression methods for writing can be displayed by the --compress method without an argument. If the --compress option is not given, then the desired compression method, if any, is deduced from the extension of the filename given as argument to the -w option. Compression is not supported for live capture.

When capturing packets, TShark writes to the standard error an initial line listing the interfaces from which packets are being captured and, if packet information isn’t being displayed to the terminal, writes a continuous count of packets captured to the standard output. If the -q option is specified, neither the continuous count nor the packet information will be displayed; instead, at the end of the capture, a count of packets captured will be displayed. If the -Q option is specified, neither the initial line, nor the packet information, nor any packet counts will be displayed. If the -q or -Q option is used, the -P, -V, or -O option can be used to cause the corresponding output to be displayed even though other output is suppressed.

When reading packets, the -q and -Q option will suppress the display of the packet summary or details; this would be used if -z options are specified in order to display statistics, so that only the statistics, not the packet information, is displayed.

The -G option is a special mode that simply causes TShark to dump one of several types of internal glossaries and then exit.

Options

-2

Perform a two-pass analysis. This causes TShark to buffer output until the entire first pass is done, but allows it to fill in fields that require future knowledge, such as 'response in frame #' fields. Also permits reassembly frame dependencies to be calculated correctly. This requires the ability to seek backwards on the input, and as such cannot be used with live captures or when reading from a pipe or FIFO.

-a|--autostop <capture autostop condition>

Specify a criterion that specifies when TShark is to stop writing to a capture file. The criterion is of the form test:value, where test is one of:

duration:value Stop writing to a capture file after value seconds have elapsed. Floating point values (e.g. 0.5) are allowed.

files:value Stop writing to capture files after value number of files were written.

filesize:value Stop writing to a capture file after it reaches a size of value kB. If this option is used together with the -b option, TShark will stop writing to the current capture file and switch to the next one if filesize is reached. When reading a capture file, TShark will stop reading the file after the number of bytes read exceeds this number (the complete packet will be read, so more bytes than this number may be read). Note that the filesize is limited to a maximum value of 2 TB, although you might have problems before then if the number of packets exceeds exceeds 232 (4294967296).

packets:value switch to the next file after it contains value packets. This does not include any packets that do not pass the display filter, so it may differ from -c<capture packet count>.

-A <user>:<password>

Specify a user and a password when TShark captures from a rpcap:// interface where authentication is required.

This option is available with libpcap with enabled remote support.

-b|--ring-buffer <capture ring buffer option>

Cause TShark to run in "multiple files" mode. In "multiple files" mode, TShark will write to several capture files. When the first capture file fills up, TShark will switch writing to the next file and so on.

The created filenames are based on the filename given with the -w option, the number of the file and on the creation date and time, e.g. outfile_00001_20240714120117.pcap, outfile_00002_20240714120523.pcap, ...

With the files option it’s also possible to form a "ring buffer". This will fill up new files until the number of files specified, at which point TShark will discard the data in the first file and start writing to that file and so on. If the files option is not set, new files filled up until one of the capture stop conditions match (or until the disk is full).

The criterion is of the form key:value, where key is one of:

duration:value switch to the next file after value seconds have elapsed, even if the current file is not completely filled up. Floating point values (e.g. 0.5) are allowed.

files:value begin again with the first file after value number of files were written (form a ring buffer). This value must be less than 100000. Caution should be used when using large numbers of files: some filesystems do not handle many files in a single directory well. The files criterion requires either duration, interval or filesize to be specified to control when to go to the next file. It should be noted that each -b parameter takes exactly one criterion; to specify two criterion, each must be preceded by the -b option.

filesize:value switch to the next file after it reaches a size of value kB. Note that the filesize is limited to a maximum value of 2 TB, although you might have problems before then if the number of packets exceeds exceeds 232 (4294967296).

interval:value switch to the next file when the time is an exact multiple of value seconds. For example, use 3600 to switch to a new file every hour on the hour.

packets:value switch to the next file after it contains value packets.

printname:filename print the name of the most recently written file to filename after the file is closed. filename can be stdout or - for standard output, or stderr for standard error.

nametimenum:value Choose between two save filename templates. If value is 1, make running file number part before start time part; this is the original and default behaviour (e.g. log_00001_20240714164426.pcap). If value is greater than 1, make start time part before running number part (e.g. log_20210828164426_00001.pcap). The latter makes alphabetical sorting order equal to creation time order, and keeps related multiple file sets in same directory close to each other.

Example: tshark -b filesize:1000 -b files:5 results in a ring buffer of five files of size one megabyte each.

-B|--buffer-size <capture buffer size>

Set capture buffer size (in MiB, default is 2 MiB). This is used by the capture driver to buffer packet data until that data can be written to disk. If you encounter packet drops while capturing, try to increase this size. Note that, while TShark attempts to set the buffer size to 2 MiB by default, and can be told to set it to a larger value, the system or interface on which you’re capturing might silently limit the capture buffer size to a lower value or raise it to a higher value.

This is available on UNIX-compatible systems, such as Linux, macOS, \*BSD, Solaris, and AIX, with libpcap 1.0.0 or later, and on Windows. It is not available on UNIX-compatible systems with earlier versions of libpcap.

This option can occur multiple times. If used before the first occurrence of the -i option, it sets the default capture buffer size. If used after an -i option, it sets the capture buffer size for the interface specified by the last -i option occurring before this option. If the capture buffer size is not set specifically, the default capture buffer size is used instead.

-c <capture packet count>

Set the maximum number of packets to read when capturing live data. If reading a capture file, set the maximum number of packets to read. This includes any packets that do not pass the display filter, so it may differ from -a packets:<capture packet count>.

-C <configuration profile>

Run with the given configuration profile. If used in conjucton with --global-profile, then the global profile with the associated name would be used.

-D|--list-interfaces

Print a list of the interfaces on which TShark can capture, and exit. For each network interface, a number and an interface name, possibly followed by a text description of the interface, is printed. The interface name or the number can be supplied to the -i flag to specify an interface on which to capture. The number can be useful on Windows systems, where the interfaces have long names that usually contain a GUID.

-e <field>

Add a field to the list of fields to display if -T ek|fields|json|pdml is selected. This option can be used multiple times on the command line. At least one field must be provided if the -T fields option is selected. Column types may be used prefixed with "_ws.col."

Example: tshark -T fields -e frame.number -e ip.addr -e udp -e _ws.col.info

Fields are separated by tab characters by default. -E controls the format of the printed fields. Giving a protocol rather than a single field will print the protocol summary (subtree label) from the packet details as a single field. If the protocol summary contains only the protocol name (e.g. "Hypertext Transfer Protocol") then the protocol filter name ("http") will be printed.

-E <field print option>

Set an option controlling the printing of fields when -T fields is selected.

Options are:

bom=y|n If y, prepend output with the UTF-8 byte order mark (hexadecimal ef, bb, bf). Defaults to n.

header=y|n If y, print a list of the field names given using -e as the first line of the output; the field name will be separated using the same character as the field values. Defaults to n.

separator=/t|/s|<character> Set the separator character to use for fields. If /t tab will be used (this is the default), if /s, a single space will be used. Otherwise any character that can be accepted by the command line as part of the option may be used.

occurrence=f|l|a Select which occurrence to use for fields that have multiple occurrences. If f the first occurrence will be used, if l the last occurrence will be used and if a all occurrences will be used (this is the default).

aggregator=,|/s|<character> Set the aggregator character to use for fields that have multiple occurrences. If , a comma will be used (this is the default), if /s, a single space will be used. Otherwise any character that can be accepted by the command line as part of the option may be used.

quote=d|s|n Set the quote character to use to surround fields. d uses double-quotes, s single-quotes, n no quotes (the default). If the quote character appears in a field value, it will be escaped by being duplicated.

escape=y|n If y, the whitespace control characters (tab, line feed, carriage return, form feed, and vertical tab) backspace, and the backslash will be replaced in field values by C-style escapes, e.g. "\n" for line feed. If n, field value strings will be printed as-is. Defaults to y.

-f <capture filter>

Set the capture filter expression.

This option can occur multiple times. If used before the first occurrence of the -i option, it sets the default capture filter expression. If used after an -i option, it sets the capture filter expression for the interface specified by the last -i option occurring before this option. If the capture filter expression is not set specifically, the default capture filter expression is used if provided.

Pre-defined capture filter names, as shown in the GUI menu item Capture→Capture Filters, can be used by prefixing the argument with "predef:". Example: tshark -f "predef:MyPredefinedHostOnlyFilter"

-F <file format>

Set the file format of the output capture file written using the -w option. The output written with the -w option is raw packet data, not text, so there is no -F option to request text output. The option -F without a value will list the available formats. The default is the pcapng format (unless the default has been changed in preferences.) .

-g

This option causes the output file(s) to be created with group-read permission (meaning that the output file(s) can be read by other members of the calling user’s group).

-G [ <report type> ]

The -G option will cause TShark to dump one of several types of glossaries and then exit. If no glossary type is specified, then the fields report will be generated by default; this is deprecated and a future version will require the report type argument. The -G option must be the first option given. Using the report type of help lists all the current report types.

The available report types include:

column-formats Dumps the column formats understood by TShark. There is one record per line. The fields are tab-delimited.

Field 1: format string (e.g. "%rD")
Field 2: text description of format string (e.g. "Dest port (resolved)")

currentprefs Dumps a copy of the current preferences file to stdout.

decodes Dumps the "layer type"/"decode as" associations to stdout. There is one record per line. The fields are tab-delimited.

Field 1: layer type, e.g. "tcp.port"
Field 2: selector in decimal

Field 3

"decode as" name, e.g. "http"

defaultprefs Dumps a default preferences file to stdout.

dissectors Dumps a list of registered dissectors to stdout. There is one record per line. The fields are tab-delimited.

Field 1: dissector name
Field 2: dissector description

dissector-tables Dumps a list of dissector tables to stdout. There is one record per line. The fields are tab-delimited.

Field 1: dissector table name, e.g. "tcp.port"
Field 2: name used for the dissector table in the GUI
Field 3: type (textual representation of the ftenum type, or "heuristic")
Field 4: base for display (for integer types)
Field 5: protocol name

Field 6

"decode as" support (for non-heuristic tables)

elastic-mapping Dumps the ElasticSearch mapping file to stdout. Fields falling in the default case (string) won’t be mapped.

enterprises Dumps the IANA Private Enterprise Number (PEN) table.

fieldcount Dumps the number of header fields to stdout.

fields[,prefix] Dumps the contents of the registration database to stdout. An independent program can take this output and format it into nice tables or HTML or whatever. There is one record per line. Each record is either a protocol or a header field, differentiated by the first field. The fields are tab-delimited.

Protocols

Field 1

'P'

Field 2: descriptive protocol name
Field 3: protocol abbreviation

Header Fields

Field 1

'F'

Field 2: descriptive field name
Field 3: field abbreviation
Field 4: type (textual representation of the ftenum type)
Field 5: parent protocol abbreviation
Field 6: base for display (for integer types); "parent bitfield width" for FT_BOOLEAN
Field 7: bitmask: format: hex: 0x....
Field 8: blurb describing field

An optional search prefix argument can be given to fields, in which case the output is limited to protocols and fields whose abbreviation starts with the search prefix.

Search Output

Field 1: protocol or field abbreviation
Field 2: descriptive protocol or field name

folders Dumps various folders used by TShark. This is essentially the same data reported in Wireshark’s About | Folders tab. There is one record per line. The fields are tab-delimited.

Field 1: Folder type (e.g "Personal configuration:")
Field 2: Folder location (e.g. "/home/vagrant/.config/wireshark/")

ftypes Dumps the "ftypes" (fundamental types) understood by TShark. There is one record per line. The fields are tab-delimited.

Field 1: FTYPE (e.g "FT_IPv6")
Field 2: text description of type (e.g. "IPv6 address")

heuristic-decodes Dumps the heuristic decodes currently installed. There is one record per line. The fields are tab-delimited.

Field 1: heuristic dissector table name (e.g. "tcp")
Field 2: name of heuristic decoder (e.g. "ucp")
Field 3: heuristic enabled (e.g. "T" or "F")
Field 4: heuristic enabled by default (e.g. "T" or "F")
Field 5: heuristic short name (e.g. "ucp_tcp")
Field 6: heuristic display name (e.g. "UCP over TCP")

help Displays the available report types.

manuf Dumps the MAC address lookup table in manuf format.

plugins Dumps the plugins currently installed. There is one record per line. The fields are tab-delimited.

Field 1: plugin library/Lua script/extcap executable (e.g. "gryphon.so")
Field 2: plugin version (e.g. 0.0.4)
Field 3: plugin type ("dissector", "tap", "file type", etc.)
Field 4: full path to plugin file

protocols Dumps the protocols in the registration database to stdout. An independent program can take this output and format it into nice tables or HTML or whatever. There is one record per line. The fields are tab-delimited.

Field 1: protocol name
Field 2: protocol short name
Field 3: protocol filter name
Field 4: protocol enabled (e.g. "T" or "F")
Field 5: protocol enabled by default (e.g. "T" or "F")
Field 6: protocol can toggle (e.g. "T" or "F")

services Dumps the TCP, UDP, and SCTP transport service (port) table.

values Dumps the value_strings, range_strings or true/false strings for fields that have them. There is one record per line. Fields are tab-delimited. There are three types of records: Value String, Range String and True/False String. The first field, 'V', 'R' or 'T', indicates the type of record.

Value Strings

Field 1

'V'

Field 2: field abbreviation to which this value string corresponds
Field 3: Integer value
Field 4: String

Range Strings

Field 1

'R'

Field 2: field abbreviation to which this range string corresponds
Field 3: Integer value: lower bound
Field 4: Integer value: upper bound
Field 5: String

True/False Strings

Field 1

'T'

Field 2: field abbreviation to which this true/false string corresponds
Field 3: True String
Field 4: False String

-h|--help

Print the version number and options and exit.

-H <input hosts file>

Read a list of entries from a "hosts" file, which will then be written to a capture file. Implies -W n. Can be called multiple times.

The "hosts" file format is documented at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file).

-i|--interface <capture interface> | -

Set the name of the network interface or pipe to use for live packet capture.

Network interface names should match one of the names listed in "tshark -D" (described above); a number, as reported by "tshark -D", can also be used.

If no interface is specified, TShark searches the list of interfaces, choosing the first non-loopback interface if there are any non-loopback interfaces, and choosing the first loopback interface if there are no non-loopback interfaces. If there are no interfaces at all, TShark reports an error and doesn’t start the capture.

Pipe names should be either the name of a FIFO (named pipe) or "-" to read data from the standard input. On Windows systems, pipe names must be of the form "\\.\pipe\pipename". Data read from pipes must be in standard pcapng or pcap format. Pcapng data must have the same endianness as the capturing host.

"TCP@<host>:<port>" causes TShark to attempt to connect to the specified port on the specified host and read pcapng or pcap data.

This option can occur multiple times. When capturing from multiple interfaces, the capture file will be saved in pcapng format.

-I|--monitor-mode

Put the interface in "monitor mode"; this is supported only on IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi interfaces, and supported only on some operating systems.

Note that in monitor mode the adapter might disassociate from the network with which it’s associated, so that you will not be able to use any wireless networks with that adapter. This could prevent accessing files on a network server, or resolving host names or network addresses, if you are capturing in monitor mode and are not connected to another network with another adapter.

This option can occur multiple times. If used before the first occurrence of the -i option, it enables the monitor mode for all interfaces. If used after an -i option, it enables the monitor mode for the interface specified by the last -i option occurring before this option.

-j <protocol match filter>

Protocol match filter used for ek|json|jsonraw|pdml output file types. Only the protocol’s parent node is included. Child nodes are only included if explicitly specified in the filter.

Example: tshark -T json -j "ip ip.flags http"

-J <protocol match filter>

Protocol top level filter used for ek|json|jsonraw|pdml output file types. The protocol’s parent node and all child nodes are included. Lower-level protocols must be explicitly specified in the filter.

Example: tshark -T pdml -J "tcp http"

-l

Flush the standard output after the information for each packet is printed. (This is not, strictly speaking, line-buffered if -V was specified; however, it is the same as line-buffered if -V wasn’t specified, as only one line is printed for each packet, and, as -l is normally used when piping a live capture to a program or script, so that output for a packet shows up as soon as the packet is seen and dissected, it should work just as well as true line-buffering. We do this as a workaround for a deficiency in the Microsoft Visual C++ C library.) This also sets --update-interval to 0 ms.

This may be useful when piping the output of TShark to another program, as it means that the program to which the output is piped will see the dissected data for a packet as soon as TShark sees the packet and generates that output, rather than seeing it only when the standard output buffer containing that data fills up.

-L|--list-data-link-types

List the data link types supported by the interface and exit. The reported link types can be used for the -y option.

-o <preference>:<value>

Set a preference value, overriding the default value and any value read from a preference file. The argument to the option is a string of the form prefname:value, where prefname is the name of the preference (which is the same name that would appear in the preference file), and value is the value to which it should be set.

-O <protocols>

Similar to the -V option, but causes TShark to only show a detailed view of the comma-separated list of protocols specified, and show only the top-level detail line for all other protocols, rather than a detailed view of all protocols. Use the output of "tshark -G protocols" to find the abbreviations of the protocols you can specify.

-p|--no-promiscuous-mode

Don’t put the interface into promiscuous mode. Note that the interface might be in promiscuous mode for some other reason; hence, -p cannot be used to ensure that the only traffic that is captured is traffic sent to or from the machine on which TShark is running, broadcast traffic, and multicast traffic to addresses received by that machine.

This option can occur multiple times. If used before the first occurrence of the -i option, no interface will be put into the promiscuous mode. If used after an -i option, the interface specified by the last -i option occurring before this option will not be put into the promiscuous mode.

-P|--print

Decode and display the packet summary or details, even if writing raw packet data using the -w option, and even if packet output is otherwise suppressed with -Q.

-q

When capturing packets, don’t display the continuous count of packets captured that is normally shown when saving a capture to a file; instead, just display, at the end of the capture, a count of packets captured. On systems that support the SIGINFO signal, such as various BSDs, you can cause the current count to be displayed by typing your "status" character (typically control-T, although it might be set to "disabled" by default on at least some BSDs, so you’d have to explicitly set it to use it).

When reading a capture file, or when capturing and not saving to a file, don’t print packet information; this is useful if you’re using a -z option to calculate statistics and don’t want the packet information printed, just the statistics.

-Q

When capturing packets, don’t display, on the standard error, the initial message indicating on which interfaces the capture is being done, the continuous count of packets captured shown when saving a capture to a file, and the final message giving the count of packets captured. Only true errors are displayed on the standard error.

This outputs less than the -q option, so the interface name and total packet count and the end of a capture are not sent to stderr.

-r|--read-file <infile>

Read packet data from infile, can be any supported capture file format (including compressed files). It is possible to use named pipes or stdin (-) here but only with certain capture file formats (in particular: those that can be read without seeking backwards.)

Tip

Reading a live capture from the standard out of another process through a pipe can circumvent restrictions that apply to TShark during live capture, such as file formats or compression.

-R|--read-filter <Read filter>

Cause the specified filter (which uses the syntax of read/display filters, rather than that of capture filters) to be applied during the first pass of analysis. Packets not matching the filter are not considered for future passes. Only makes sense with multiple passes, see -2. For regular filtering on single-pass dissect see -Y instead.

Note that forward-looking fields such as 'response in frame #' cannot be used with this filter, since they will not have been calculated when this filter is applied.

-s|--snapshot-length <capture snaplen>

Set the default snapshot length to use when capturing live data. No more than snaplen bytes of each network packet will be read into memory, or saved to disk. A value of 0 specifies a snapshot length of 262144, so that the full packet is captured; this is the default.

This option can occur multiple times. If used before the first occurrence of the -i option, it sets the default snapshot length. If used after an -i option, it sets the snapshot length for the interface specified by the last -i option occurring before this option. If the snapshot length is not set specifically, the default snapshot length is used if provided.

-S <separator>

Set the line separator to be printed between packets.

Set the format of the output when viewing decoded packet data. The options are one of:

ek Newline delimited JSON format for bulk import into Elasticsearch. It can be used with -j or -J to specify which protocols to include or with -x to include raw hex-encoded packet data. If -P is specified it will print the packet summary only, with both -P and -V it will print the packet summary and packet details. If neither -P or -V are used it will print the packet details only. Example of usage to import data into Elasticsearch:

tshark -T ek -j "http tcp ip" -P -V -x -r file.pcap > file.json
curl -H "Content-Type: application/x-ndjson" -XPOST http://elasticsearch:9200/_bulk --data-binary "@file.json"

Elastic requires a mapping file to be loaded as template for packets-* index in order to convert Wireshark types to elastic types. This file can be auto-generated with the command "tshark -G elastic-mapping". Since the mapping file can be huge, protocols can be selected by using the option --elastic-mapping-filter:

tshark -G elastic-mapping --elastic-mapping-filter ip,udp,dns

fields The values of fields specified with the -e option, in a form specified by the -E option. For example,

tshark -T fields -E separator=, -E quote=d

would generate comma-separated values (CSV) output suitable for importing into your favorite spreadsheet program.

json JSON file format. It can be used with -j or -J to specify which protocols to include or with -x option to include raw hex-encoded packet data. Example of usage:

tshark -T json -r file.pcap
tshark -T json -j "http tcp ip" -x -r file.pcap

jsonraw JSON file format including only raw hex-encoded packet data. It can be used with -j or -J to specify which protocols to include. Example of usage:

tshark -T jsonraw -r file.pcap
tshark -T jsonraw -j "http tcp ip" -x -r file.pcap

pdml Packet Details Markup Language, an XML-based format for the details of a decoded packet. This information is equivalent to the packet details printed with the -V option. Using the --color option will add color attributes to pdml output. These attributes are nonstandard.

ps PostScript for a human-readable one-line summary of each of the packets, or a multi-line view of the details of each of the packets, depending on whether the -V option was specified.

psml Packet Summary Markup Language, an XML-based format for the summary information of a decoded packet. This information is equivalent to the information shown in the one-line summary printed by default. Using the --color option will add color attributes to pdml output. These attributes are nonstandard.

tabs Similar to the default text report except the human-readable one-line summary of each packet will include an ASCII horizontal tab (0x09) character as a delimiter between each column.

text Text of a human-readable one-line summary of each of the packets, or a multi-line view of the details of each of the packets, depending on whether the -V option was specified. This is the default.

--temp-dir <directory>

Specifies the directory into which temporary files (including capture files) are to be written. The default behavior on UNIX-compatible systems, such as Linux, macOS, \*BSD, Solaris, and AIX, is to use the environment variable $TMPDIR if set, and the system default, typically /tmp, if it is not. On Windows, the %TEMP% environment variable is used, which typically defaults to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp.

-U <tap name>

PDUs export, exports PDUs from infile to outfile according to the tap name given. Use -Y to filter.

Enter an empty tap name "" or a tap name of ? to get a list of available names.

-v|--version

Print the full version information and exit.

-V

Cause TShark to print a view of the packet details.

-w <outfile> | -

Write raw packet data to outfile or to the standard output if outfile is '-'. The -F and --compress options can be used to control the file format and compression method. If the latter is not given, then the extension may be used to deduce the desired compression algorithm, if supported, e.g. a gzip archive for '.gz'.

Note

-w provides raw packet data, not text. If you want text output you need to redirect stdout (e.g. using '>'), don’t use the -w option for this.

-W <file format option>

Save extra information in the file if the format supports it. For example,

tshark -F pcapng -W n

will save host name resolution records along with captured packets.

Future versions of TShark may automatically change the capture format to pcapng as needed.

The argument is a string that may contain the following letter:

n write network address resolution information (pcapng only)

-x

Cause TShark to print a hex and ASCII dump of the packet data after printing the summary and/or details, if either are also being displayed.

--hexdump <hexoption>

Cause TShark to print a hex and ASCII dump of the packet data with the ability to select which data sources to dump and how to format or exclude the ASCII dump text.

This option can be used multiple times where the data source <hexoption> is all or frames and the ASCII dump text <hexoption> is ascii, delimit, noascii.

Example:  tshark ... --hexdump frames --hexdump delimit ...

all: Enable hexdump, generate hexdump blocks for all data sources associated with each frame. Used to negate earlier use of --hexdump frames. The -x option displays all data sources by default.
frames: Enable hexdump, generate hexdump blocks only for the frame data. Use this option to exclude, from hexdump output, any hexdump blocks for secondary data sources such as 'Bitstring tvb', 'Reassembled TCP', 'De-chunked entity body', etc.
ascii: Enable hexdump, with undelimited ASCII dump text. Used to negate earlier use of --hexdump delimit or --hexdump noascii. The -x option displays undelimited ASCII dump text by default.
delimit: Enable hexdump with the ASCII dump text delimited with '|' characters. This is useful to unambiguously determine the last of the hex byte text and start of the ASCII dump text.
noascii: Enable hexdump without printing any ASCII dump text.
help: Display --hexdump specific help then exit.

The use of --hexdump <hexoption> is particularly useful to generate output that can be used to create a pcap or pcapng file from a capture file type such as Microsoft NetMon 2.x which TShark and Wireshark can read but can not directly do a "Save as" nor export packets from.

Examples:

Generate hexdump output, with only the frame data source, with delimited ASCII dump text, with each frame hex block preceded by a human readable timestamp that is directly usable by the text2pcap utility:

tshark ... --hexdump frames --hexdump delimit \
    -P -t ad -o gui.column.format:"Time","%t" \
    | text2pcap -n -t '%F %T.%f' - MYNEWPCAPNG

Generate hexdump output, with only the frame data source, with no ASCII dump text, with each frame hex block preceded by an epoch timestamp that is directly usable by the text2pcap utility:

tshark ... --hexdump frames --hexdump noascii \
    -P -t e -o gui.column.format:"Time","%t" \
    | text2pcap -n -t %s.%f - MYNEWPCAPNG

-X <eXtension options>

Specify an option to be passed to a TShark module. The eXtension option is in the form extension_key:value, where extension_key can be:

lua_script:lua_script_filename tells TShark to load the given script in addition to the default Lua scripts.

lua_scriptnum:argument tells TShark to pass the given argument to the lua script identified by 'num', which is the number indexed order of the 'lua_script' command. For example, if only one script was loaded with '-X lua_script:my.lua', then '-X lua_script1:foo' will pass the string 'foo' to the 'my.lua' script. If two scripts were loaded, such as '-X lua_script:my.lua' and '-X lua_script:other.lua' in that order, then a '-X lua_script2:bar' would pass the string 'bar' to the second lua script, namely 'other.lua'.

read_format:file_format tells TShark to use the given file format to read in the file (the file given in the -r command option). Providing no file_format argument, or an invalid one, will produce a list of available file formats to use. For example,

tshark -r rtcp_broken.pcapng -X read_format:"MIME Files Format" -V

will display the internal file structure and allow access to the file-pcapng fields.

-y|--linktype <capture link type>

Set the data link type to use while capturing packets. The values reported by -L are the values that can be used.

This option can occur multiple times. If used before the first occurrence of the -i option, it sets the default capture link type. If used after an -i option, it sets the capture link type for the interface specified by the last -i option occurring before this option. If the capture link type is not set specifically, the default capture link type is used if provided.

-Y|--display-filter <displaY filter>

Cause the specified filter (which uses the syntax of read/display filters, rather than that of capture filters) to be applied before printing a decoded form of packets or writing packets to a file. Packets matching the filter are printed or written to file; packets that the matching packets depend upon (e.g., fragments), are not printed but are written to file; packets not matching the filter nor depended upon are discarded rather than being printed or written.

Use this instead of -R for filtering using single-pass analysis. If doing two-pass analysis (see -2) then only packets matching the read filter (if there is one) will be checked against this filter.

-M <auto session reset>

Automatically reset internal session when reached to specified number of packets. For example,

tshark -M 100000

will reset session every 100000 packets.

This feature does not support -2 two-pass analysis

-z <statistics>

Get TShark to collect various types of statistics and display the result after finishing reading the capture file. Use the -q option if you’re reading a capture file and only want the statistics printed, not any per-packet information.

Statistics are calculated independently of the normal per-packet output, unaffected by the main display filter. However, most have their own optional filter parameter, and only packets that match that filter (and any capture filter or read filter) will be used in the calculations.

Note that the -z proto option is different - it doesn’t cause statistics to be gathered and printed when the capture is complete, it modifies the regular packet summary output to include the values of fields specified with the option. Therefore you must not use the -q option, as that option would suppress the printing of the regular packet summary output, and must also not use the -V option, as that would cause packet detail information rather than packet summary information to be printed.

Some of the currently implemented statistics are:

-z help

Display all possible values for -z.

-z afp,srt[,filter]

Show Apple Filing Protocol service response time statistics.

-z ancp,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on Access Node Control Protocol message types and adjacency packet codes.

-z ansi_a,bsmap[,filter]

Count the number of ANSI A-I/F BSMAP messages of each type.

-z ansi_a,dtap[,filter]

Count the number of ANSI A-I/F DTAP messages of each type.

-z ansi_map[,filter]

Count the number of ANSI MAP messages of each type, and calculate the total number of bytes and average bytes of each message type.

-z asap,stat[,filter]

Calculate statistics on Aggregate Service Access Protocol (ASAP). For each ASAP message type, displays the number, rate, and share among all ASAP message types of both packets and bytes, and the first and last time that it is seen.

-z bacapp_instanceid,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on BACnet APDUs, collated by instance ID. Displayed information includes source and destination address and service type.

-z bacapp_ip,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on BACnet APDUs, collated by source and destination address. Displayed information includes service type, object ID, and instance ID.

-z bacapp_objectid,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on BACnet APDUs, collated by object ID. Displayed information includes source and destination address, service type, and instance ID.

-z bacapp_service,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on BACnet APDUs, collated by service type. Displayed information includes source and destination address, object ID, and instance ID.

-z calcappprotocol,stat[,filter]

Calculate statistics on the Calculation Application Protocol of Reliable Server Pooling. For each message type, displays the number, rate, and share among all message types of both packets and bytes, and the first and last time that it is seen.

-z camel,counter[,filter]

Count the number of CAMEL messages for each opcode.

-z camel,srt[,filter]

Collect requests/response SRT (Service Response Time) data for CAMEL. Data collected is number of request messages with corresponding response of each CAMEL message type, along with the minimum, maximum, and average response time.

-z collectd,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics for collectd. The gathered statistics are the number of collectd packets and the total number of value segments, along with the host, plugin, and type of the values.

-z componentstatusprotocol,stat[,filter]

Calculate statistics on the Calculation Status Protocol of Reliable Server Pooling. For each message type, displays the number, rate and share among all message types of both packets and bytes, and the first and last time that it is seen.

-z conv,type[,filter]

Create a table that lists all conversations that could be seen in the capture. type specifies the conversation endpoint type for which we want to generate the statistics; currently the supported ones are:

"bluetooth" Bluetooth addresses
"dccp"      DCCP/IP socket pairs Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported
"eth"       Ethernet addresses
"fc"        Fibre Channel addresses
"fddi"      FDDI addresses
"ip"        IPv4 addresses
"ipv6"      IPv6 addresses
"ipx"       IPX addresses
"jxta"      JXTA message addresses
"mptcp"     Multipath TCP connections
"ncp"       NCP connections
"rsvp"      RSVP connections
"sctp"      SCTP/IP socket pairs Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported
"sll"       Linux "cooked mode" capture addresses
"tcp"       TCP/IP socket pairs  Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported
"tr"        Token Ring addresses
"udp"       UDP/IP socket pairs  Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported
"usb"       USB addresses
"wlan"      IEEE 802.11 addresses
"wpan"      IEEE 802.15.4 addresses
"zbee_nwk"  ZigBee Network Layer addresses

The table is presented with one line for each conversation which displays the number of frames/bytes in each direction, the total number of frames/bytes, relative start time and duration. The table is sorted according to the total number of frames.

-z credentials

Collect credentials (username/passwords) from packets. The report includes the packet number, the protocol that had that credential, the username and the password. For protocols just using one single field as authentication, this is provided as a password and a placeholder in place of the user. Currently implemented protocols include FTP, HTTP, IMAP, POP, and SMTP.

-z dcerpc,srt,uuid,major.minor[,filter]

Collect call/reply SRT (Service Response Time) data for DCERPC interface uuid, version major.minor. Data collected is the number of calls for each procedure, MinSRT, MaxSRT and AvgSRT.

Example: -z dcerpc,srt,12345778-1234-abcd-ef00-0123456789ac,1.0 will collect data for the CIFS SAMR Interface.

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

Example: -z dcerpc,srt,12345778-1234-abcd-ef00-0123456789ac,1.0,ip.addr==1.2.3.4 will collect SAMR SRT statistics for a specific host.

-z dests,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on IPv4 destination addresses and the protocols and ports appearing on each address.

-z dhcp,stat[,filter]

Show DHCP (BOOTP) statistics.

-z diameter,avp[,cmd.code,field,field,...]

This option enables extraction of most important diameter fields from large capture files. Exactly one text line for each diameter message with matched diameter.cmd.code will be printed.

Empty diameter command code or '*' can be specified to match any diameter.cmd.code

Example: -z diameter,avp extract default field set from diameter messages.

Example: -z diameter,avp,280 extract default field set from diameter DWR messages.

Example: -z diameter,avp,272 extract default field set from diameter CC messages.

Extract most important fields from diameter CC messages:

tshark -r file.cap.gz -q -z diameter,avp,272,CC-Request-Type,CC-Request-Number,Session-Id,Subscription-Id-Data,Rating-Group,Result-Code

Following fields will be printed out for each diameter message:

"frame"        Frame number.
"time"         Unix time of the frame arrival.
"src"          Source address.
"srcport"      Source port.
"dst"          Destination address.
"dstport"      Destination port.
"proto"        Constant string 'diameter', which can be used for post processing of tshark output.  E.g. grep/sed/awk.
"msgnr"        seq. number of diameter message within the frame.  E.g. '2' for the third diameter message in the same frame.
"is_request"   '0' if message is a request, '1' if message is an answer.
"cmd"          diameter.cmd_code, E.g. '272' for credit control messages.
"req_frame"    Number of frame where matched request was found or '0'.
"ans_frame"    Number of frame where matched answer was found or '0'.
"resp_time"    response time in seconds, '0' in case if matched Request/Answer is not found in trace.  E.g. in the begin or end of capture.

-z diameter,avp option is much faster than -V -T text or -T pdml options.

-z diameter,avp option is more powerful than -T field and -z proto,colinfo options.

Multiple diameter messages in one frame are supported.

Several fields with same name within one diameter message are supported, e.g. diameter.Subscription-Id-Data or diameter.Rating-Group.

Note: tshark -q option is recommended to suppress default TShark output.

-z diameter,srt[,filter]

Collect requests/response SRT (Service Response Time) data for Diameter. Data collected is number of request and response pairs of each Diameter command code, Minimum SRT, Maximum SRT, Average SRT, and Sum SRT. Currently no statistics are gathered on unpaired messages.

-z dns,tree[,filter]

Create a summary of the captured DNS packets. General information are collected such as qtype and qclass distribution. For some data (as qname length or DNS payload) max, min and average values are also displayed.

-z endpoints,type[,filter]

Create a table that lists all endpoints that could be seen in the capture. type specifies the endpoint type for which we want to generate the statistics; currently the supported ones are:

"bluetooth" Bluetooth addresses
"dccp"      DCCP/IP socket pairs Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported
"eth"       Ethernet addresses
"fc"        Fibre Channel addresses
"fddi"      FDDI addresses
"ip"        IPv4 addresses
"ipv6"      IPv6 addresses
"ipx"       IPX addresses
"jxta"      JXTA message addresses
"mptcp"     Multipath TCP connections
"ncp"       NCP connections
"rsvp"      RSVP connections
"sctp"      SCTP/IP socket pairs Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported
"sll"       Linux "cooked mode" capture addresses
"tcp"       TCP/IP socket pairs  Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported
"tr"        Token Ring addresses
"udp"       UDP/IP socket pairs  Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported
"usb"       USB addresses
"wlan"      IEEE 802.11 addresses
"wpan"      IEEE 802.15.4 addresses
"zbee_nwk"  ZigBee Network Layer addresses

The table is presented with one line for each endpoint which displays the total number of packets/bytes and the number of packets/bytes in each direction. The table is sorted according to the total number of packets.

-z enrp,stat[,filter]

Calculate statistics on Endpoint Handlespace Redundancy Protocol (ENRP). For each message type, displays the number, rate, and share among all message types of both packets and bytes, and the first and last time that it is seen.

-z expert[,error|,warn|,note|,chat|,comment][,filter]

Collects information about all expert info, and will display them in order, grouped by severity.

Example: -z expert,sip will show expert items of all severity for frames that match the sip protocol.

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

Example: -z "expert,note,tcp" will only collect expert items for frames that include the tcp protocol, with a severity of note or higher.

-z f1ap,tree[,filter]

Calculate the distribution of F1AP packets, grouped by packet types.

-z f5_tmm_dist,tree[,filter]

Calculate the F5 Ethernet trailer Traffic Management Microkernel distribution. Displayed information is the number of packets and bytes, grouped by the TMM slot and number, whether packets are ingress or egress, and whether there is a flow ID and virtual server name, a flow ID without virtual server name, or no flow ID, along with total for all packets with F5 trailers.

-z f5_virt_dist,tree[,filter]

Calculate F5 Ethernet trailer Virtual Server distribution. Displayed information is the number of packets and bytes, grouped by the virtual server name if it exists, or by whether there is a flow ID or not if there is no virtual server name, as well as totals for all packets with F5 trailers.

-z fc,srt[,filter]

Collect requests/response SRT (Service Response Time) data for GTP. Data collected is the number of request/response pairs, minimum SRT, maximum SRT, average SRT, and sum SRT for each value of the Type field (next protocol). No statistics are gathered on unpaired messages.

-z flow,name,mode[,filter]

Displays the flow of data between two nodes. Output is the same as ASCII format saved from GUI.

name specifies the flow name. It can be one of:

any      All frames
icmp     ICMP
icmpv6   ICMPv6
lbm_uim  UIM
tcp      TCP

mode specifies the address type. It can be one of:

standard   Any address
network    Network address

Example: -z flow,tcp,network will show data flow for all TCP frames

-z follow,prot,mode,filter[,range]

Displays the contents of a TCP or UDP stream between two nodes. The data sent by the second node is prefixed with a tab to differentiate it from the data sent by the first node.

prot specifies the transport protocol. It can be one of:

tcp   TCP
udp   UDP
dccp  DCCP
tls   TLS or SSL
http  HTTP streams
http2 HTTP/2 streams
quic  QUIC streams

Note

While the usage help presents sip as an option, the proper stream filters are not implemented so SIP calls cannot be followed in TShark, only in Wireshark.

mode specifies the output mode. It can be one of:

ascii  ASCII output with dots for non-printable characters
ebcdic EBCDIC output with dots for non-printable characters
hex    Hexadecimal and ASCII data with offsets
raw    Hexadecimal data
utf-8  UTF-8 output with REPLACEMENT CHARACTERs for invalid sequences
yaml   YAML format

Since the output in ascii, ebcdic, or utf-8 mode may contain newlines, each section of output is preceded by its length in bytes plus a newline. (Note that for utf-8 this is not UTF-8 characters, and may be different than the length as transmitted due to the substitution of replacement characters for invalid sequences.)

filter specifies the stream to be displayed. There are three formats:

ip-addr0:port0,ip-addr1:port1
stream-index
stream-index,substream-index

The first format specifies IP addresses and TCP, UDP, or DCCP port pairs. (TCP ports are used for TLS, HTTP, and HTTP2; QUIC does not support address and port matching because of connection migration.)

The second format specifies stream indices, and is used for TCP, UDP, DCCP, TLS, and HTTP. (TLS and HTTP use TCP stream indices.)

The third format, specifying streams and substreams, is used for HTTP/2 and QUIC due to their use of multiplexing. (TCP stream and HTTP/2 stream indices for HTTP/2, QUIC connection number and stream ID for QUIC.)

range optionally specifies which "chunks" of the stream should be displayed.

Example: -z "follow,tcp,hex,1" will display the contents of the second TCP stream (the first is stream 0) in "hex" format.

===================================================================
Follow: tcp,hex
Filter: tcp.stream eq 1
Node 0: 200.57.7.197:32891
Node 1: 200.57.7.198:2906
00000000  00 00 00 22 00 00 00 07  00 0a 85 02 07 e9 00 02  ...".... ........
00000010  07 e9 06 0f 00 0d 00 04  00 00 00 01 00 03 00 06  ........ ........
00000020  1f 00 06 04 00 00                                 ......
00000000  00 01 00 00                                       ....
00000026  00 02 00 00

Example: -z "follow,tcp,ascii,200.57.7.197:32891,200.57.7.198:2906" will display the contents of a TCP stream between 200.57.7.197 port 32891 and 200.57.7.98 port 2906.

===================================================================
Follow: tcp,ascii
Filter: (omitted for readability)
Node 0: 200.57.7.197:32891
Node 1: 200.57.7.198:2906
38
...".....
................
4
....

Example: -z "follow,http2,hex,0,1" will display the contents of a HTTP/2 stream on the first TCP session (index 0) with HTTP/2 Stream ID 1.

===================================================================
Follow: http2,hex
Filter: tcp.stream eq 0 and http2.streamid eq 1
Node 0: 172.16.5.1:49178
Node 1: 172.16.5.10:8443
00000000  00 00 2c 01 05 00 00 00  01 82 04 8b 63 c1 ac 2a  ..,..... ....c..*
00000010  27 1d 9d 57 ae a9 bf 87  41 8c 0b a2 5c 2e 2e da  '..W.... A...\...
00000020  e1 05 c7 9a 69 9f 7a 88  25 b6 50 c3 ab b6 25 c3  ....i.z. %.P...%.
00000030  53 03 2a 2f 2a                                    S.*/*
    00000000  00 00 22 01 04 00 00 00  01 88 5f 87 35 23 98 ac  .."..... .._.5#..
    00000010  57 54 df 61 96 c3 61 be  94 03 8a 61 2c 6a 08 2f  WT.a..a. ...a,j./
    00000020  34 a0 5b b8 21 5c 0b ea  62 d1 bf                 4.[.!\.. b..
    0000002B  00 40 00 00 00 00 00 00  01 89 50 4e 47 0d 0a 1a  .@...... ..PNG...

-z fractalgeneratorprotocol,stat[,filter]

Calculate statistics on the Fractal Generator Protocol of Reliable Server Pooling. For each message type, displays the number, rate and share among all message types of both packets and bytes, and the first and last time that it is seen.

-z gsm_a

Count the number of GSM A-I/F messages of each type within the following categories: BSSMAP, DTAP Mobility Management, DTAP Radio Resource Management, DTAP Call Control, DTAP GPRS Mobility Management, DTAP SMS messages, DTAP GPRS Session Management, DTAP Supplementary Services, DTAP Special Conformance Testing Functions, and SACCH Radio Resource Management.

Unlike the individual statistics for each category that follow, this only prints a line for each message type that appears, instead of including lines for message types with a count of zero.

-z gsm_a,category[,filter]

Count the number of messages of each type in GSM A-I/F category, which can be one of:

bssmap     BSSMAP
dtap_cc    DTAP Call Control
dtap_gmm   DTAP GPRS Mobility Management
dtap_mm    DTAP Mobility Management
dtap_rr    DTAP Radio Resource Management
dtap_sacch SACCH Radio Resource Management
dtap_sm    DTAP GPRS Session Management
dtap_sms   DTAP Short Message Service
dtap_ss    DTAP Supplementary Services
dtap_tp    DTAP Special Conformance Testing Functions

-z gsm_map,operation[,filter]

Calculate statistics on GSM MAP. For each op code, the total number of invokes and results, along with the average and total bytes for invokes and results separately and combined is displayed.

-z gtp,srt[,filter]

Collect requests/response SRT (Service Response Time) data for GTP. Data collected is the number of calls, minimum SRT, maximum SRT, average SRT, and sum SRT for certain commands. Currently no statistics are gathered on unpaired messages.

-z gtpv2,srt[,filter]

-z h225,counter[,filter]

Count ITU-T H.225 messages and their reasons. In the first column you get a list of H.225 messages and H.225 message reasons, which occur in the current capture file. The number of occurrences of each message or reason is displayed in the second column.

Example: -z h225,counter.

Example: use -z "h225,counter,ip.addr==1.2.3.4" to only collect stats for H.225 packets exchanged by the host at IP address 1.2.3.4 .

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

-z h225_ras,rtd[,filter]

Collect requests/response RTD (Response Time Delay) data for ITU-T H.225 RAS. Data collected is number of calls of each ITU-T H.225 RAS Message Type, Minimum RTD, Maximum RTD, Average RTD, Minimum in Frame, and Maximum in Frame. You will also get the number of Open Requests (Unresponded Requests), Discarded Responses (Responses without matching request) and Duplicate Messages.

Example: tshark -z h225_ras,rtd

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

Example: -z "h225_ras,rtd,ip.addr==1.2.3.4" will only collect stats for ITU-T H.225 RAS packets exchanged by the host at IP address 1.2.3.4 .

-z hart_ip,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on HART-IP packets, grouping by message types and message IDs within types.

-z hosts[,ip][,ipv4][,ipv6]

Dump any collected resolved IPv4 and/or IPv6 addresses in "hosts" format. Both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are dumped by default. "ip" argument will dump only IPv4 addresses.

Addresses are collected from a number of sources, including standard "hosts" files and captured traffic. Resolution must be enabled, e.g. through the -n option.

-z hpfeeds,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics for HPFEEDS traffic such as publish per channel, and opcode distribution.

-z http,stat[,filter]

Count the HTTP response status codes and the HTTP request methods.

-z http,tree[,filter]

Calculate the HTTP packet distribution. Displayed values are the response status codes and request methods.

-z http_req,tree[,filter]

Calculate the HTTP requests by server. Displayed values are the server name and the URI path.

-z http_seq,tree[,filter]

Calculate the HTTP request sequence statistics, which correlate referring URIs with request URIs.

-z http_srv,tree[,filter]

Calculate the HTTP requests and responses by server. For the HTTP requests, displayed values are the server IP address and server hostname. For the HTTP responses, displayed values are the server IP address and status.

-z http2,tree[,filter]

Calculate the HTTP/2 packet distribution. Displayed values are the frame types.

-z icmp,srt[,filter]

Compute total ICMP echo requests, replies, loss, and percent loss, as well as minimum, maximum, mean, median and sample standard deviation SRT statistics typical of what ping provides.

Example: -z icmp,srt,ip.src==1.2.3.4 will collect ICMP SRT statistics for ICMP echo request packets originating from a specific host.

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

-z icmpv6,srt[,filter]

Compute total ICMPv6 echo requests, replies, loss, and percent loss, as well as minimum, maximum, mean, median and sample standard deviation SRT statistics typical of what ping provides.

Example: -z icmpv6,srt,ipv6.src==fe80::1 will collect ICMPv6 SRT statistics for ICMPv6 echo request packets originating from a specific host.

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

-z io,phs[,filter]

Create Protocol Hierarchy Statistics listing both number of packets and bytes.

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

-z io,stat,interval[,filter][,filter][,filter]...

Collect packet/bytes statistics for the capture in intervals of interval seconds. Interval can be specified either as a whole or fractional second and can be specified with microsecond (us) resolution. If interval is 0, the statistics will be calculated over all packets.

If one or more filters are specified statistics will be calculated for all filters and presented with one column of statistics for each filter.

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

Example: -z io,stat,1,ip.addr==1.2.3.4 will generate 1 second statistics for all traffic to/from host 1.2.3.4.

Example: -z "io,stat,0.001,smb&&ip.addr==1.2.3.4" will generate 1ms statistics for all SMB packets to/from host 1.2.3.4.

The examples above all use the standard syntax for generating statistics which only calculates the number of packets and bytes in each interval.

io,stat can also do much more statistics and calculate COUNT(), SUM(), MIN(), MAX(), AVG() and LOAD() using a slightly different filter syntax:

-z io,stat,interval,"COUNT|SUM|MIN|MAX|AVG|LOAD(field)filter"

Note

One important thing to note here is that the filter is not optional and that the field that the calculation is based on MUST be part of the filter string or the calculation will fail.

So: -z io,stat,0.010,AVG(smb.time) does not work. Use -z io,stat,0.010,AVG(smb.time)smb.time instead. Also be aware that a field can exist multiple times inside the same packet and will then be counted multiple times in those packets.

Note

A second important thing to note is that the system setting for decimal separator must be set to "."! If it is set to "," the statistics will not be displayed per filter.

COUNT - Calculates the number of times that the field name (not its value) appears per interval in the filtered packet list. ''field'' can be any display filter name.

Example: -z io,stat,0.010,"COUNT(smb.sid)smb.sid"

This will count the total number of SIDs seen in each 10ms interval.

SUM - Unlike COUNT, the values of the specified field are summed per time interval. ''field'' can only be a named integer, float, double or relative time field.

Example: tshark -z io,stat,0.010,"SUM(frame.len)frame.len"

Reports the total number of bytes that were transmitted bidirectionally in all the packets within a 10 millisecond interval.

MIN/MAX/AVG - The minimum, maximum, or average field value in each interval is calculated. The specified field must be a named integer, float, double or relative time field. For relative time fields, the output is presented in seconds with six decimal digits of precision rounded to the nearest microsecond.

In the following example, the time of the first Read_AndX call, the last Read_AndX response values are displayed and the minimum, maximum, and average Read response times (SRTs) are calculated. NOTE: If the DOS command shell line continuation character, ''^'' is used, each line cannot end in a comma so it is placed at the beginning of each continuation line:

tshark -o tcp.desegment_tcp_streams:FALSE -n -q -r smb_reads.cap -z io,stat,0,
"MIN(frame.time_relative)frame.time_relative and smb.cmd==0x2e and smb.flags.response==0",
"MAX(frame.time_relative)frame.time_relative and smb.cmd==0x2e and smb.flags.response==1",
"MIN(smb.time)smb.time and smb.cmd==0x2e",
"MAX(smb.time)smb.time and smb.cmd==0x2e",
"AVG(smb.time)smb.time and smb.cmd==0x2e"

======================================================================================================
IO Statistics
Column #0: MIN(frame.time_relative)frame.time_relative and smb.cmd==0x2e and smb.flags.response==0
Column #1: MAX(frame.time_relative)frame.time_relative and smb.cmd==0x2e and smb.flags.response==1
Column #2: MIN(smb.time)smb.time and smb.cmd==0x2e
Column #3: MAX(smb.time)smb.time and smb.cmd==0x2e
Column #4: AVG(smb.time)smb.time and smb.cmd==0x2e
                |    Column #0   |    Column #1   |    Column #2   |    Column #3   |    Column #4   |
Time            |       MIN      |       MAX      |       MIN      |       MAX      |       AVG      |
000.000-                 0.000000         7.704054         0.000072         0.005539         0.000295
======================================================================================================

The following command displays the average SMB Read response PDU size, the total number of read PDU bytes, the average SMB Write request PDU size, and the total number of bytes transferred in SMB Write PDUs:

tshark -n -q -r smb_reads_writes.cap -z io,stat,0,
"AVG(smb.file.rw.length)smb.file.rw.length and smb.cmd==0x2e and smb.response_to",
"SUM(smb.file.rw.length)smb.file.rw.length and smb.cmd==0x2e and smb.response_to",
"AVG(smb.file.rw.length)smb.file.rw.length and smb.cmd==0x2f and not smb.response_to",
"SUM(smb.file.rw.length)smb.file.rw.length and smb.cmd==0x2f and not smb.response_to"

=====================================================================================
IO Statistics
Column #0: AVG(smb.file.rw.length)smb.file.rw.length and smb.cmd==0x2e and smb.response_to
Column #1: SUM(smb.file.rw.length)smb.file.rw.length and smb.cmd==0x2e and smb.response_to
Column #2: AVG(smb.file.rw.length)smb.file.rw.length and smb.cmd==0x2f and not smb.response_to
Column #3: SUM(smb.file.rw.length)smb.file.rw.length and smb.cmd==0x2f and not smb.response_to
                |    Column #0   |    Column #1   |    Column #2   |    Column #3   |
Time            |       AVG      |       SUM      |       AVG      |       SUM      |
000.000-                    30018         28067522               72             3240
=====================================================================================

LOAD - The LOAD/Queue-Depth in each interval is calculated. The specified field must be a relative time field that represents a response time. For example smb.time. For each interval the Queue-Depth for the specified protocol is calculated.

The following command displays the average SMB LOAD. A value of 1.0 represents one I/O in flight.

tshark -n -q -r smb_reads_writes.cap
-z "io,stat,0.001,LOAD(smb.time)smb.time"

============================================================================
IO Statistics
Interval:   0.001000 secs
Column #0: LOAD(smb.time)smb.time
                        |    Column #0   |
Time                    |       LOAD     |
0000.000000-0000.001000         1.000000
0000.001000-0000.002000         0.741000
0000.002000-0000.003000         0.000000
0000.003000-0000.004000         1.000000

FRAMES | BYTES[()filter] - Displays the total number of frames or bytes. The filter field is optional but if included it must be prepended with ''()''.

The following command displays five columns: the total number of frames and bytes (transferred bidirectionally) using a single comma, the same two stats using the FRAMES and BYTES subcommands, the total number of frames containing at least one SMB Read response, and the total number of bytes transmitted to the client (unidirectionally) at IP address 10.1.0.64.

tshark -o tcp.desegment_tcp_streams:FALSE -n -q -r smb_reads.cap -z io,stat,0,,FRAMES,BYTES,
"FRAMES()smb.cmd==0x2e and smb.response_to","BYTES()ip.dst==10.1.0.64"

=======================================================================================================================
IO Statistics
Column #0:
Column #1: FRAMES
Column #2: BYTES
Column #3: FRAMES()smb.cmd==0x2e and smb.response_to
Column #4: BYTES()ip.dst==10.1.0.64
                |            Column #0            |    Column #1   |    Column #2   |    Column #3   |    Column #4   |
Time            |     Frames     |      Bytes     |     FRAMES     |     BYTES      |     FRAMES     |     BYTES      |
000.000-                    33576         29721685            33576         29721685              870         29004801
=======================================================================================================================

-z ip_hosts,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on IPv4 addresses, with source and destination addresses all grouped together.

-z ip_srcdst,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on IPv4 addresses, with source and destination addresses separated into separate categories.

-z ip_ttl,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on the time to live (TTL) values that occur for each IPv4 source address.

-z ip6_dests,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on IPv6 destination addresses and the protocols and ports appearing on each address.

-z ip6_hosts,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on IPv6 addresses, with source and destination addresses all grouped together.

-z ip6_ptype,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on port types that occur on IPv6 packets.

-z ip6_srcdst,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on IPv6 addresses, with source and destination addresses separated into separate categories.

-z ip6_hop,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on the hop limits that occur for each IPv6 source address.

-z isup_msg,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on ISUP messages. Displayed information is message types and direction (originating point code and destination point code.)

-z lbmr_queue_ads_queue,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on LBM Topic Resolution Packets. Displays queue advertisements collated by queue name and then source addresses and port.

-z lbmr_queue_ads_source,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on LBM Topic Resolution Packets. Displays queue advertisements collated by source address and then queue and port.

-z lbmr_queue_queries_queue,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on LBM Topic Resolution Packets. Displays queue queries collated by queue name and then receiver addresses.

-z lbmr_queue_queries_receiver,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on LBM Topic Resolution Packets. Displays queue queries collated by receiver address and then queue.

-z lbmr_topic_ads_source,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on LBM Topic Resolution Packets. Displays topic advertisements collated by source address and then topic name and source string.

-z lbmr_topic_ads_topic,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on LBM Topic Resolution Packets. Displays topic advertisements collated by topic name and then source address and source string.

-z lbmr_topic_ads_transport,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on LBM Topic Resolution Packets. Displays topic advertisements collated by source string and then topic name.

-z lbmr_topic_queries_pattern,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on LBM Topic Resolution Packets. Displays topic queries collated by pattern and then receiver address.

-z lbmr_topic_queries_pattern_receiver,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on LBM Topic Resolution Packets. Displays topic queries collated by receiver address and then pattern.

-z lbmr_topic_queries_receiver,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on LBM Topic Resolution Packets. Displays topic queries collated by receiver address and then topic name.

-z lbmr_topic_queries_topic,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on LBM Topic Resolution Packets. Displays topic queries collated by topic name and then receiver address.

-z mac-3gpp,stat[,filter]

This option will activate a counter for LTE or NR MAC messages. You will get information about the maximum number of UEs/TTI, common messages and various counters for each UE that appears in the log.

Example: tshark -z mac-3gpp,stat.

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

Example: -z "mac-3gpp,stat,mac-lte.rnti>3000" will only collect stats for LTE UEs with an assigned RNTI whose value is more than 3000.

-z megaco,rtd[,filter]

Collect requests/response RTD (Response Time Delay) data for MEGACO. (This is similar to -z smb,srt). Data collected is the number of calls for each known MEGACO Type, MinRTD, MaxRTD and AvgRTD. Additionally you get the number of duplicate requests/responses, unresponded requests, responses, which don’t match with any request. Example: -z megaco,rtd.

Example: -z "megaco,rtd,ip.addr==1.2.3.4" will only collect stats for MEGACO packets exchanged by the host at IP address 1.2.3.4 .

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

-z mgcp,rtd[,filter]

Collect requests/response RTD (Response Time Delay) data for MGCP. (This is similar to -z smb,srt). Data collected is the number of calls for each known MGCP Type, MinRTD, MaxRTD and AvgRTD. Additionally you get the number of duplicate requests/responses, unresponded requests, responses, which don’t match with any request. Example: -z mgcp,rtd.

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

Example: -z "mgcp,rtd,ip.addr==1.2.3.4" will only collect stats for MGCP packets exchanged by the host at IP address 1.2.3.4 .

-z mtp3,msus[,filter]

Calculate statistics on MTP3 MSUs. For each combination of originating point code, destination point code, and service indicator, calculates the total number of MSUs, the total bytes, and the average bytes per MSU.

-z ncp,srt[,filter]

Collect requests/response SRT (Service Response Time) data for Netware Core Protocol. Minimum SRT, maximum SRT, average SRT, and sum SRT is displayed for request/response pairs, organized by group, function and subfunction, and verb. No statistics are gathered on unpaired messages.

-z osmux,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics for the OSmux voice/signaling multiplex protocol. Displays the total number of OSmux packets, and displays for each stream the number of packets, number of packets with the RTP market bit set, number of AMR frames, jitter analysis, and sequence number analysis.

-z pfcp,srt[,filter]

Collect requests/response SRT (Service Response Time) data for PFCP. Data collected is the number of calls, minimum SRT, maximum SRT, average SRT, and sum SRT for certain commands. Currently no statistics are gathered on unpaired messages.

-z pingpongprotocol,stat[,filter]

Calculate statistics on the Ping Pong Protocol of Reliable Server Pooling. For each message type, displays the number, rate and share among all message types of both packets and bytes, and the first and last time that it is seen.

-z plen,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on packet lengths. Packets are grouped into buckets that grow exponentially with powers of two.

-z proto,colinfo,filter,field

Append all field values for the packet to the Info column of the one-line summary output. This feature can be used to append arbitrary fields to the Info column in addition to the normal content of that column. field is the display-filter name of a field which value should be placed in the Info column. filter is a filter string that controls for which packets the field value will be presented in the info column. field will only be presented in the Info column for the packets which match filter.

Note

In order for TShark to be able to extract the field value from the packet, field MUST be part of the filter string. If not, TShark will not be able to extract its value.

For a simple example to add the "nfs.fh.hash" field to the Info column for all packets containing the "nfs.fh.hash" field, use

-z proto,colinfo,nfs.fh.hash,nfs.fh.hash

To put "nfs.fh.hash" in the Info column but only for packets coming from host 1.2.3.4 use:

-z "proto,colinfo,nfs.fh.hash && ip.src==1.2.3.4,nfs.fh.hash"

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

-z ptype,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on port types that occur on IPv4 packets.

-z radius,rtd[,filter]

Collect requests/response RTD (Response Time Delay) data for RADIUS. The data collected for each RADIUS code is the number of calls, Minimum RTD, Maximum RTD, Average RTD, Minimum in Frame, and Maximum in Frame, along with the number of Open Requests (Unresponded Requests), Discarded Responses (Responses without matching request) and Duplicate Messages.

-z rlc-3gpp,stat[,filter]

This option will activate a counter for LTE or NR RLC messages. You will get information about common messages and various counters for each UE that appears in the log.

Example: tshark -z rlc-3gpp,stat.

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

Example: -z "rlc-3gpp,stat,rlc-nr.ueid>3000" will only collect stats for NR UEs with a UEId of more than 3000.

-z rpc,programs

Collect call/reply SRT data for all known ONC-RPC programs/versions. Data collected is number of calls for each protocol/version, MinSRT, MaxSRT and AvgSRT. This option can only be used once on the command line.

-z rpc,srt,program,version[,filter]

Collect call/reply SRT (Service Response Time) data for program/version. Data collected is the number of calls for each procedure, MinSRT, MaxSRT, AvgSRT, and the total time taken for each procedure.

Example: tshark -z rpc,srt,100003,3 will collect data for NFS v3.

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

Example: -z rpc,srt,100003,3,nfs.fh.hash==0x12345678 will collect NFS v3 SRT statistics for a specific file.

-z rtp,streams

Collect statistics for all RTP streams and calculate max. delta, max. and mean jitter and packet loss percentages.

-z rtsp,stat[,filter]

Count the RTSP response status codes and the RSTP request methods.

-z rtsp,tree[,filter]

Calculate the RTSP packet distribution. Displayed values are the response status codes and request methods.

-z sametime,tree[,filter]

Calculate statistics on SAMETIME messages. Displayed values are the messages type, send type, and user status.

-z scsi,srt,cmdset[,filter]

Collect call/reply SRT (Service Response Time) data for SCSI commandset cmdset.

Commandsets are 0:SBC 1:SSC 5:MMC

Data collected is the number of calls for each procedure, MinSRT, MaxSRT and AvgSRT.

Example: -z scsi,srt,0 will collect data for SCSI BLOCK COMMANDS (SBC).

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

Example: -z scsi,srt,0,ip.addr==1.2.3.4 will collect SCSI SBC SRT statistics for a specific iscsi/ifcp/fcip host.

-z sctp,stat

Activate a counter for SCTP chunks. In addition to the total number of SCTP packets, for each source and destination address and port combination the number of chunks of the most common types (DATA, SACK, HEARTBEAT, HEARTBEAT ACK, INIT, INIT ACK, COOKIE ECHO, COOKIE ACK, ABORT, and ERROR) are displayed.

-z sip,stat[,filter]

This option will activate a counter for SIP messages. You will get the number of occurrences of each SIP Method and of each SIP Status-Code. Additionally you also get the number of resent SIP Messages (only for SIP over UDP).

Example: -z sip,stat.

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

Example: -z "sip,stat,ip.addr==1.2.3.4" will only collect stats for SIP packets exchanged by the host at IP address 1.2.3.4 .

-z smb,sids

When this feature is used TShark will print a report with all the discovered SID and account name mappings. Only those SIDs where the account name is known will be presented in the table.

For this feature to work you will need to either to enable "Edit/Preferences/Protocols/SMB/Snoop SID to name mappings" in the preferences or you can override the preferences by specifying -o "smb.sid_name_snooping:TRUE" on the TShark command line.

The current method used by TShark to find the SID→name mapping is relatively restricted with a hope of future expansion.

-z smb,srt[,filter]

Collect call/reply SRT (Service Response Time) data for SMB. Data collected is number of calls for each SMB command, MinSRT, MaxSRT and AvgSRT.

Example: -z smb,srt

The data will be presented as separate tables for all normal SMB commands, all Transaction2 commands and all NT Transaction commands. Only those commands that are seen in the capture will have its stats displayed. Only the first command in a xAndX command chain will be used in the calculation. So for common SessionSetupAndX + TreeConnectAndX chains, only the SessionSetupAndX call will be used in the statistics. This is a flaw that might be fixed in the future.

This option can be used multiple times on the command line.

Example: -z "smb,srt,ip.addr==1.2.3.4" will only collect stats for SMB packets exchanged by the host at IP address 1.2.3.4 .

-z smb2,srt[,filter]

Collect call/reply SRT (Service Response Time) data for SMB versions 2 and 3. The data collected for each normal command type is the number of calls, MinSRT, MaxSRT, AvgSRT, and SumSRT. No data is collected on cancel or oplock break requests, or on unpaired commands. Only the first response to a given request is used; retransmissions are not included in the calculation.

-z smpp_commands,tree[,filter]

Calculate the SMPP command distribution. Displayed values are command IDs for both requests and responses, and status for responses.

-z snmp,srt[,filter]

Collect call/reply SRT (Service Response Time) data for SNMP. The data collected for each PDU type is the number of request/response pairs, MinSRT, MaxSRT, AvgSRT, and SumSRT. No data is collected on unpaired messages.

-z someip_messages,tree[,filter]

Create statistic of SOME/IP messages. Messages are counted and displayed as Messages grouped by sender/receiver.

-z someipsd_entries,tree[,filter]

Create statistic of SOME/IP-SD entries. Entries are counted and displayed as Entries grouped by sender/receiver.

-z sv

Print out the time since the start of the capture and sample count for each IEC 61850 Sampled Values packet.

-z ucp_messages,tree[,filter]

Calculate the message distribution of UCP packets. Displayed values are operation types for both operations and results, and whether results are positive or negative, with error codes displayed for negative results.

-z wsp,stat[,filter]

Count the PDU types and the status codes of reply packets for WSP packets.

--capture-comment <comment>

Add a capture comment to the output file, if supported by the output file format.

This option may be specified multiple times. Note that Wireshark currently only displays the first comment of a capture file.

--list-time-stamp-types

List time stamp types supported for the interface. If no time stamp type can be set, no time stamp types are listed.

--time-stamp-type <type>

Change the interface’s timestamp method.

--update-interval <interval>

Set the length of time in milliseconds between new packet reports during a capture. Also sets the granularity of file duration conditions. The default value is 100ms.

--color

Enable coloring of packets according to standard Wireshark color filters. On Windows colors are limited to the standard console character attribute colors. Other platforms require a terminal that handles 24-bit "true color" terminal escape sequences. See https://wiki.wireshark.org/ColoringRules for more information on configuring color filters.

--no-duplicate-keys

If a key appears multiple times in an object, only write it a single time with as value a json array containing all the separate values. (Only works with -T json)

--elastic-mapping-filter <protocol>,<protocol>,...

When generating the ElasticSearch mapping file, only put the specified protocols in it, to avoid a huge mapping file that can choke some software (such as Kibana). The option takes a list of wanted protocol abbreviations, separated by comma.

Example: ip,udp,dns puts only those three protocols in the mapping file.

--export-objects <protocol>,<destdir>

Export all objects within a protocol into directory destdir. The available values for protocol can be listed with --export-objects help.

The objects are directly saved in the given directory. Filenames are dependent on the dissector, but typically it is named after the basename of a file. Duplicate files are not overwritten, instead an increasing number is appended before the file extension.

This interface is subject to change, adding the possibility to filter on files.

--print-timers

Output JSON containing elapsed times for each pass tshark does to process a capture file and the sum elapsed time for all passes. The per-pass output contains the total elapsed time and aggregate counters for per-packet operations (dissection and filtering).

--compress <type>

Compress the output file using the type compression format. --compress with no argument provides a list of the compression formats supported for writing. The type given takes precedence over the extension of outfile.

Note

This option only works with the -r option, i.e., when reading a capture file, not for live captures.

Dissection Options

-d <layer type>==<selector>,<decode-as protocol>

Like Wireshark’s Decode As... feature, this lets you specify how a layer type should be dissected. If the layer type in question (for example, tcp.port or udp.port for a TCP or UDP port number) has the specified selector value, packets should be dissected as the specified protocol.

Example 1. Decode As Port

-d tcp.port==8888,http will decode any traffic running over TCP port 8888 as HTTP.

Example 2. Decode As Port Range

-d tcp.port==8888-8890,http will decode any traffic running over TCP ports 8888, 8889 or 8890 as HTTP.

Example 3. Decode As Port Range via Length

-d tcp.port==8888:3,http will decode any traffic running over the three TCP ports 8888, 8889 or 8890 as HTTP.

Using an invalid selector or protocol will print out a list of valid selectors and protocol names, respectively.

Example 4. Decode As List of Selectors

-d . is a quick way to get a list of valid selectors.

Example 5. Decode As List of Values for a Selector

-d ethertype==0x0800,. is a quick way to get a list of protocols that can be selected with an ethertype.

--disable-all-protocols

Disable dissection of all protocols.

--disable-protocol <proto_name>[,<proto_name>,...]

Disable dissection of proto_name. Use a proto_name of ALL to override your chosen profile’s default enabled protocol list and temporarily disable all protocols.

--disable-heuristic <short_name>

Disable dissection of heuristic protocol.

--enable-protocol <proto_name>[,<proto_name>,...]

Enable dissection of proto_name. Use a proto_name of ALL to override your chosen profile’s default disabled protocol list and temporarily enable all protocols which are enabled by default.

If a protocol is implicated in both --disable-protocol and --enable-protocol, the protocol is enabled. This allows you to temporarily disable all protocols but a list of exceptions. Example: --disable-protocol ALL --enable-protocol eth,ip

--enable-heuristic <short_name>

Enable dissection of heuristic protocol.

-K <keytab>

Load kerberos crypto keys from the specified keytab file. This option can be used multiple times to load keys from several files.

Example: -K krb5.keytab

-n

Disable network object name resolution (such as hostname, TCP and UDP port names); the -N option might override this one.

-N <name resolving flags>

Turn on name resolving only for particular types of addresses and port numbers, with name resolving for other types of addresses and port numbers turned off. This option (along with -n) can be specified multiple times; the last value given overrides earlier ones. This option and -n override the options from the preferences, including preferences set via the -o option. If both -N and -n options are not present, the values from the preferences are used, which default to -N dmN.

The argument is a string that may contain the letters:

d to enable resolution from captured DNS packets

g to enable IP address geolocation information lookup from configured MaxMind databases

m to enable MAC address resolution

n to enable network address resolution

N to enable using external resolvers (e.g., DNS) for network address resolution; no effect without n also enabled.

s to enable address resolution using SNI information found in captured handshake packets

t to enable transport-layer port number resolution

v to enable VLAN IDs to names resolution

Caution

In tshark single-pass mode, external resolution and geolocation lookup is performed synchronously. For live captures, which are always in single-pass mode, this makes it more difficult for dissection to keep up with a busy network, possibly leading to dropped packets.

--only-protocols <protocols>

Only enable dissection of these protocols, comma separated. Disable everything else.

-t (a|ad|adoy|d|dd|e|r|u|ud|udoy)[.[N]]|.[N]

Set the format of the packet timestamp displayed in the default time column. The format can be one of:

a absolute: The absolute time, as local time in your time zone, is the actual time the packet was captured, with no date displayed

ad absolute with date: The absolute date, displayed as YYYY-MM-DD, and time, as local time in your time zone, is the actual time and date the packet was captured

adoy absolute with date using day of year: The absolute date, displayed as YYYY/DOY, and time, as local time in your time zone, is the actual time and date the packet was captured

d delta: The delta time is the time since the previous packet was captured

dd delta_displayed: The delta_displayed time is the time since the previous displayed packet was captured

e epoch: The time in seconds since epoch (Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00)

r relative: The relative time is the time elapsed between the first packet and the current packet

u UTC: The absolute time, as UTC, is the actual time the packet was captured, with no date displayed

ud UTC with date: The absolute date, displayed as YYYY-MM-DD, and time, as UTC, is the actual time and date the packet was captured

udoy UTC with date using day of year: The absolute date, displayed as YYYY/DOY, and time, as UTC, is the actual time and date the packet was captured

.[N] Set the precision: N is the number of decimals (0 through 9). If using "." without N, automatically determine precision from trace.

The default format is relative with precision based on capture format.

-u <s|hms>

Specifies how packet timestamp formats in -t which are relative times (i.e. relative, delta, and delta_displayed) are displayed. Valid choices are:

s for seconds

hms for hours, minutes, and seconds

The default format is seconds.

Diagnostic Options

--log-level <level>: Set the active log level. Supported levels in lowest to highest order are "noisy", "debug", "info", "message", "warning", "critical", and "error". Messages at each level and higher will be printed, for example "warning" prints "warning", "critical", and "error" messages and "noisy" prints all messages. Levels are case insensitive.
--log-fatal <level>: Abort the program if any messages are logged at the specified level or higher. For example, "warning" aborts on any "warning", "critical", or "error" messages.
--log-domains <list>: Only print messages for the specified log domains, e.g. "GUI,Epan,sshdump". List of domains must be comma-separated. Can be negated with "!" as the first character (inverts the match).
--log-debug <list>: Force the specified domains to log at the "debug" level. List of domains must be comma-separated. Can be negated with "!" as the first character (inverts the match).
--log-noisy <list>: Force the specified domains to log at the "noisy" level. List of domains must be comma-separated. Can be negated with "!" as the first character (inverts the match).
--log-fatal-domains <list>: Abort the program if any messages are logged for the specified log domains. List of domains must be comma-separated.
--log-file <path>: Write log messages and stderr output to the specified file.

Capture Filter Syntax

See the manual page of pcap-filter(7) or, if that doesn’t exist, tcpdump(8), or, if that doesn’t exist, https://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureFilters.

Read Filter Syntax

For a complete table of protocol and protocol fields that are filterable in TShark see the wireshark-filter(4) manual page.

Files

These files contain various Wireshark configuration settings.

Preferences

The preferences files contain global (system-wide) and personal preference settings. If the system-wide preference file exists, it is read first, overriding the default settings. If the personal preferences file exists, it is read next, overriding any previous values. Note: If the command line flag -o is used (possibly more than once), it will in turn override values from the preferences files.

The preferences settings are in the form prefname:value, one per line, where prefname is the name of the preference and value is the value to which it should be set; white space is allowed between : and value. A preference setting can be continued on subsequent lines by indenting the continuation lines with white space. A # character starts a comment that runs to the end of the line:

# Vertical scrollbars should be on right side?
# TRUE or FALSE (case-insensitive).
gui.scrollbar_on_right: TRUE

The global preferences file is looked for in the wireshark directory under the share subdirectory of the main installation directory. On macOS, this would typically be /Application/Wireshark.app/Contents/Resources/share; on other UNIX-compatible systems, such as Linux, \*BSD, Solaris, and AIX, this would typically be /usr/share/wireshark/preferences for system-installed packages and /usr/local/share/wireshark/preferences for locally-installed packages; on Windows, this would typically be C:\Program Files\Wireshark\preferences.

On UNIX-compatible systems, the personal preferences file is looked for in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wireshark/preferences, (or, if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wireshark does not exist while $HOME/.wireshark does exist, $HOME/.wireshark/preferences); this is typically $HOME/.config/wireshark/preferences. On Windows, the personal preferences file is looked for in %APPDATA%\Wireshark\preferences (or, if %APPDATA% isn’t defined, %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Wireshark\preferences).

Disabled (Enabled) Protocols

The disabled_protos files contain system-wide and personal lists of protocols that have been disabled, so that their dissectors are never called. The files contain protocol names, one per line, where the protocol name is the same name that would be used in a display filter for the protocol:

http
tcp     # a comment

If a protocol is listed in the global disabled_protos file it cannot be enabled by the user.

The global disabled_protos file uses the same directory as the global preferences file.

The personal disabled_protos file uses the same directory as the personal preferences file.

The disabled_protos files list only protocols that are enabled by default but have been disabled; protocols that are disabled by default (such as some postdissectors) are not listed. There are analogous enabled_protos files for protocols that are disabled by default but have been enabled.

Heuristic Dissectors

The heuristic_protos files contain system-wide and personal lists of heuristic dissectors and indicate whether they are enabled or disabled. The files contain heuristic dissector unique short names, one per line, followed by a comma and 0 for disabled and 1 for enabled:

quic,1
rtcp_stun,1
rtcp_udp,1
rtp_stun,0
rtp_udp,0
tls_tcp,1

The global heuristic_protos file uses the same directory as the global preferences file.

The personal heuristic_protos file uses the same directory as the personal preferences file.

Name Resolution (hosts)

Entries in hosts files in the global and personal preferences directory are used to resolve IPv4 and IPv6 addresses before any other attempts are made to resolve them. The file has the standard hosts file syntax; each line contains one IP address and name, separated by whitespace. The personal hosts file, if present, overrides the one in the global directory.

Capture filter name resolution is handled by libpcap on UNIX-compatible systems, such as Linux, macOS, \*BSD, Solaris, and AIX, and Npcap or WinPcap on Windows. As such the Wireshark personal hosts file will not be consulted for capture filter name resolution.

Name Resolution (subnets)

If an IPv4 address cannot be translated via name resolution (no exact match is found) then a partial match is attempted via the subnets file. Both the global subnets file and personal subnets files are used if they exist.

Each line of this file consists of an IPv4 address, a subnet mask length separated only by a / and a name separated by whitespace. While the address must be a full IPv4 address, any values beyond the mask length are subsequently ignored.

An example is:

# Comments must be prepended by the # sign! 192.168.0.0/24 ws_test_network

A partially matched name will be printed as "subnet-name.remaining-address". For example, "192.168.0.1" under the subnet above would be printed as "ws_test_network.1"; if the mask length above had been 16 rather than 24, the printed address would be "ws_test_network.0.1".

Name Resolution (ethers)

The ethers files are consulted to correlate 6-byte hardware addresses to names. First the personal ethers file is tried and if an address is not found there the global ethers file is tried next.

Each line contains one hardware address and name, separated by whitespace. The digits of the hardware address are separated by colons (:), dashes (-) or periods (.). The same separator character must be used consistently in an address. The following three lines are valid lines of an ethers file:

ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff          Broadcast
c0-00-ff-ff-ff-ff          TR_broadcast
00.00.00.00.00.00          Zero_broadcast

The global ethers file is looked for in the /etc directory on UNIX-compatible systems, such as Linux, macOS, \*BSD, Solaris, and AIX, and in the main installation directory (for example, C:\Program Files\Wireshark) on Windows systems.

The personal ethers file is looked for in the same directory as the personal preferences file.

Capture filter name resolution is handled by libpcap on UNIX-compatible systems and Npcap or WinPcap on Windows. As such the Wireshark personal ethers file will not be consulted for capture filter name resolution.

Name Resolution (manuf)

The manuf file is used to match the 3-byte vendor portion of a 6-byte hardware address with the manufacturer’s name; it can also contain well-known MAC addresses and address ranges specified with a netmask. The format of the file is similar the ethers files, except that entries such as:

00:00:0C      Cisco     Cisco Systems, Inc

can be provided, with the 3-byte OUI and both an abbreviated and long name for a vendor, and entries such as:

00-00-0C-07-AC/40     All-HSRP-routers

can be specified, with a MAC address and a mask indicating how many bits of the address must match. The above entry, for example, has 40 significant bits, or 5 bytes, and would match addresses from 00-00-0C-07-AC-00 through 00-00-0C-07-AC-FF. The mask need not be a multiple of 8.

A global manuf file is looked for in the same directory as the global preferences file, and a personal manuf file is looked for in the same directory as the personal preferences file.

In earlier versions of Wireshark, official information from the IEEE Registration Authority was distributed in this format as the global manuf file. This information is now compiled in to speed program startup, but the internal information can be written out in this format with tshark -G manuf.

In addition to the manuf file, another file with the same format, wka, is looked for in the global directory. This file is distributed with Wireshark, and contains data about well-known MAC adddresses and address ranges assembled from various non IEEE but respected sources.

Name Resolution (services)

The services file is used to translate port numbers into names. Both the global services file and personal services files are used if they exist.

The file has the standard services file syntax; each line contains one (service) name and one transport identifier separated by white space. The transport identifier includes one port number and one transport protocol name (typically tcp, udp, or sctp) separated by a /.

An example is:

mydns 5045/udp # My own Domain Name Server mydns 5045/tcp # My own Domain Name Server

In earlier versions of Wireshark, official information from the IANA Registry was distributed in this format as the global services file. This information is now compiled in to speed program startup, but the internal information can be written out in this format with tshark -G services.

Name Resolution (ipxnets)

The ipxnets files are used to correlate 4-byte IPX network numbers to names. First the global ipxnets file is tried and if that address is not found there the personal one is tried next.

The format is the same as the ethers file, except that each address is four bytes instead of six. Additionally, the address can be represented as a single hexadecimal number, as is more common in the IPX world, rather than four hex octets. For example, these four lines are valid lines of an ipxnets file:

C0.A8.2C.00              HR
c0-a8-1c-00              CEO
00:00:BE:EF              IT_Server1
110f                     FileServer3

The global ipxnets file is looked for in the /etc directory on UNIX-compatible systems, such as Linux, macOS, \*BSD, Solaris, and AIX, and in the main installation directory (for example, C:\Program Files\Wireshark) on Windows systems.

The personal ipxnets file is looked for in the same directory as the personal preferences file.

Name Resolution (ss7pcs)

The ss7pcs file is used to translate SS7 point codes to names. It is read from the personal configuration directory.

Each line in this file consists of one network indicator followed by a dash followed by a point code in decimal and a node name separated by whitespace. An example is:

2-1234 MyPointCode1

Name Resolution (vlans)

The vlans file is used to translate VLAN tag IDs into names. It is read from the personal configuration directory.

Each line in this file consists of one VLAN tag ID separated by whitespace from a name. An example is:

123    Server-Lan
2049   HR-Client-LAN

Color Filters (Coloring Rules)

The colorfilters files contain system-wide and personal color filters. Each line contains one filter, starting with the string displayed in the dialog box, followed by the corresponding display filter. Then the background and foreground colors are appended:

# a comment
@tcp@tcp@[59345,58980,65534][0,0,0]
@udp@udp@[28834,57427,65533][0,0,0]

The global colorfilters file uses the same directory as the global preferences file.

The personal colorfilters file uses the same directory as the personal preferences file. It is written through the View:Coloring Rules dialog.

If the global colorfilters file exists, it is used only if the personal colorfilters file does not exist; global and personal color filters are not merged.

Plugins

Wireshark looks for plugins in both a personal plugin folder and a global plugin folder.

On UNIX-compatible systems, such as Linux, macOS, \*BSD, Solaris, and AIX, the global plugin directory is lib/wireshark/plugins/ (on some systems substitute lib64 for lib) under the main installation directory (for example, /usr/local/lib/wireshark/plugins/). The personal plugin directory is $HOME/.local/lib/wireshark/plugins.

On macOS, if Wireshark is installed as an application bundle, the global plugin folder is instead %APPDIR%/Contents/PlugIns/wireshark.

On Windows, the global plugin folder is plugins/ under the main installation directory (for example, C:\Program Files\Wireshark\plugins\). The personal plugin folder is %APPDATA%\Wireshark\plugins (or, if %APPDATA% isn’t defined, %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Wireshark\plugins).

Lua plugins are stored in the plugin folders; compiled plugins are stored in subfolders of the plugin folders, with the subfolder name being the Wireshark minor version number (X.Y). There is another hierarchical level for each Wireshark plugin type (libwireshark, libwiretap and codecs). For example, the location for a libwireshark plugin foo.so (foo.dll on Windows) would be PLUGINDIR/X.Y/epan (libwireshark used to be called libepan; the other folder names are codecs and wiretap).

Note

On UNIX-compatible systems, Lua plugins (but not binary plugins) may also be placed in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wireshark/plugins, (or, if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wireshark does not exist while $HOME/.wireshark does exist, $HOME/.wireshark/plugins.)

Note that a dissector plugin module may support more than one protocol; there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between dissector plugin modules and protocols. Protocols supported by a dissector plugin module are enabled and disabled in the same way as protocols built into Wireshark.

Output

TShark uses UTF-8 to represent strings internally. In some cases the output might not be valid. For example, a dissector might generate invalid UTF-8 character sequences. Programs reading TShark output should expect UTF-8 and be prepared for invalid output.

If TShark detects that it is writing to a TTY on a UNIX-compatible system, such as Linux, macOS, \*BSD, Solaris, and AIX, and the locale does not support UTF-8, output will be re-encoded to match the current locale.

If TShark detects that it is writing to the console on Windows, dissection output will be encoded as UTF-16LE. Other output will be UTF-8. If extended characters don’t display properly in your terminal you might try setting your console code page to UTF-8 (chcp 65001) and using a modern terminal application if possible.

Environment Variables

WIRESHARK_CONFIG_DIR: This environment variable overrides the location of personal configuration files. On UNIX-compatible systems, such as Linux, macOS, \*BSD, Solaris, and AIX, it defaults to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wireshark (or, if that directory doesn’t exist but $HOME/.wireshark does exist, $HOME/.wireshark); this is typically $HOME/.config/wireshark. On Windows, it defaults to %APPDATA%\Wireshark (or, if %APPDATA% isn’t defined, %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Wireshark). Available since Wireshark 3.0.
WIRESHARK_DEBUG_WMEM_OVERRIDE: Setting this environment variable forces the wmem framework to use the specified allocator backend for all allocations, regardless of which backend is normally specified by the code. This is mainly useful to developers when testing or debugging. See README.wmem in the source distribution for details.
WIRESHARK_RUN_FROM_BUILD_DIRECTORY: This environment variable causes the plugins and other data files to be loaded from the build directory (where the program was compiled) rather than from the standard locations. It has no effect when the program in question is running with root (or setuid) permissions on UNIX-compatible systems, such as Linux, macOS, \*BSD, Solaris, and AIX.
WIRESHARK_DATA_DIR: This environment variable causes the various data files to be loaded from a directory other than the standard locations. It has no effect when the program in question is running with root (or setuid) permissions on UNIX-compatible systems.
WIRESHARK_EXTCAP_DIR: This environment variable causes the various extcap programs and scripts to be run from a directory other than the standard locations. It has no effect when the program in question is running with root (or setuid) permissions on UNIX-compatible systems.
WIRESHARK_PLUGIN_DIR: This environment variable causes the various plugins to be loaded from a directory other than the standard locations. It has no effect when the program in question is running with root (or setuid) permissions on UNIX-compatible systems.
ERF_RECORDS_TO_CHECK: This environment variable controls the number of ERF records checked when deciding if a file really is in the ERF format. Setting this environment variable a number higher than the default (20) would make false positives less likely.
IPFIX_RECORDS_TO_CHECK: This environment variable controls the number of IPFIX records checked when deciding if a file really is in the IPFIX format. Setting this environment variable a number higher than the default (20) would make false positives less likely.
WIRESHARK_ABORT_ON_DISSECTOR_BUG: If this environment variable is set, TShark will call abort(3) when a dissector bug is encountered. abort(3) will cause the program to exit abnormally; if you are running TShark in a debugger, it should halt in the debugger and allow inspection of the process, and, if you are not running it in a debugger, it will, on some OSes, assuming your environment is configured correctly, generate a core dump file. This can be useful to developers attempting to troubleshoot a problem with a protocol dissector.
WIRESHARK_ABORT_ON_TOO_MANY_ITEMS: If this environment variable is set, TShark will call abort(3) if a dissector tries to add too many items to a tree (generally this is an indication of the dissector not breaking out of a loop soon enough). abort(3) will cause the program to exit abnormally; if you are running TShark in a debugger, it should halt in the debugger and allow inspection of the process, and, if you are not running it in a debugger, it will, on some OSes, assuming your environment is configured correctly, generate a core dump file. This can be useful to developers attempting to troubleshoot a problem with a protocol dissector.
WIRESHARK_LOG_LEVEL: This environment variable controls the verbosity of diagnostic messages to the console. From less verbose to most verbose levels can be critical, warning, message, info, debug or noisy. Levels above the current level are also active. Levels critical and error are always active.
WIRESHARK_LOG_FATAL: Sets the fatal log level. Fatal log levels cause the program to abort. This level can be set to Error, critical or warning. Error is always fatal and is the default.
WIRESHARK_LOG_DOMAINS: This environment variable selects which log domains are active. The filter is given as a case-insensitive comma separated list. If set only the included domains will be enabled. The default domain is always considered to be enabled. Domain filter lists can be preceded by '!' to invert the sense of the match.
WIRESHARK_LOG_DEBUG: List of domains with debug log level. This sets the level of the provided log domains and takes precedence over the active domains filter. If preceded by '!' this disables the debug level instead.
WIRESHARK_LOG_NOISY: Same as above but for noisy log level instead.

Notes

This is the manual page for TShark 4.4.1. TShark is part of the Wireshark distribution. The latest version of Wireshark can be found at https://www.wireshark.org.

HTML versions of the Wireshark project man pages are available at https://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages.

Authors

TShark uses the same packet dissection code that Wireshark does, as well as using many other modules from Wireshark; see the list of authors in the Wireshark man page for a list of authors of that code.

tshark - Man Page

Examples (TL;DR)

Synopsis

Description

Options

Dissection Options

Diagnostic Options

Capture Filter Syntax

Read Filter Syntax

Files

Output

Environment Variables

See Also

Notes

Authors

Referenced By