Introduction
6
In 2006 the project moved house and re-emerged under a new name: Wireshark.
In 2008, after ten years of development, Wireshark finally arrived at version 1.0. This release was the first
deemed complete, with the minimum features implemented. Its release coincided with the first Wireshark
Developer and User Conference, called SharkFest.
1.5. Development and maintenance of
Wireshark
Wireshark was initially developed by Gerald Combs. Ongoing development and maintenance of Wireshark
is handled by the Wireshark team, a loose group of individuals who fix bugs and provide new functionality.
There have also been a large number of people who have contributed protocol dissectors to Wireshark,
and it is expected that this will continue. You can find a list of the people who have contributed code to
Wireshark by checking the about dialog box of Wireshark, or at the authors page on the Wireshark web site.
Wireshark is an open source software project, and is released under the GNU General Public License
(GPL). All source code is freely available under the GPL. You are welcome to modify Wireshark to suit
your own needs, and it would be appreciated if you contribute your improvements back to the Wireshark
team.
You gain three benefits by contributing your improvements back to the community:
• Other people who find your contributions useful will appreciate them, and you will know that you have
helped people in the same way that the developers of Wireshark have helped people.
• The developers of Wireshark might improve your changes even more, as there's always room for
improvement. Or they may implement some advanced things on top of your code, which can be useful
for yourself too.
• The maintainers and developers of Wireshark will maintain your code as well, fixing it when API
changes or other changes are made, and generally keeping it in tune with what is happening with
Wireshark. So if Wireshark is updated (which is done often), you can get a new Wireshark version from
the website and your changes will already be included without any effort for you.
The Wireshark source code and binary kits for some platforms are all available on the download page of
the Wireshark website: http://www.wireshark.org/download.html.
1.6. Reporting problems and getting help
If you have problems, or need help with Wireshark, there are several places that may be of interest to you
(well, besides this guide of course).
1.6.1. Website
You will find lots of useful information on the Wireshark homepage at http://www.wireshark.org.
1.6.2. Wiki
The Wireshark Wiki at http://wiki.wireshark.org provides a wide range of information related to Wireshark
and packet capturing in general. You will find a lot of information not part of this user's guide. For example,