Debugging Network Problems with TCPDUMP

The tcpdump program (dump traffic on a network) can be used to view network traffic, and, if necessary, its output can be parsed do deduce the source of excess packets. You can get the tcpdump-smb program, an extension to tcpdump, from the Samba Website (www.samba.org). It’s used to investigate SMB networking problems over NetBUI and TCP/IP. Typically, it must be run as root due to the hardware access level and the information it provides. The following examples shows a debugging session for Samba, but tcpdump can be used for any other networking problems.