Ethernet Probe? maybe packet sniffer?

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
1

I'm not exactly sure if I'm even thinking of this right. Here's my dilemma:

My father got some new machines from Italy with no documentation. We're currently trying to get some info from the manufacturer as to exactly how to interface the machines but the language barrier is a little hard. I'm not looking for a translator.

The machines have ethernet connections and are supposed to talk to each other. Basically they receive a when to start command, and send a completion command. More info may be sent but I'm not really interested in it.

The quicker I can get these machines up and running the better. They work on some type of private network but I really have no information at all about the specifics.

I can manually start the machines and have them run their cycles so I'm looking for a way to probe the ethernet connections to see what kind of data they're sending.

Is this possible? Hooking them together works because they're sending data, but I have no idea what, and it would be nice to setup some personalized software to control these new guys.

I also forgot to add, I have a controller that I can type in the machine number and tell it to start, and it will. The data is sent over ethernet. I fear that this is some type of custom setup made by the previous owners so there may be zero documentation. So i'm just looking to replicate what this controller sends and receives, it doesn't even have to make sense, although it would be nice.

Thanks for the help and a bump in any direction is better than where I am now.

2

If you need to reverse engineer a protocol then Arduino is the wrong place to start in my estimation. Ethereal or some such would be a much better place to start.

3

Ditto ethereal, which is now called wireshark, or some other packet sniffer.

-j

4

Awesome, thanks for the point in the right direction.

5

coming from an ex cs security major lol yeah ethereal now wireshark would be a good place to start when packet sniffing. Keep in mind though that wireshark only listens to data going through the nic that it's scanning.

You can physically route all traffic through the computer thats doing the scanning to get data on the foreign pcs, you can make sniffing computer dhcp server, or you can arp poison.

if you're working from a windows platform look into cain and abel. this can do filter scanning and initiate the arp poisoning. Then monitor the nic with wireshark.

someone needs to make a network sniffer with an arduino. one capable of rebuilding and injecting packets.