On Mar 18, 2008, at 7:08 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Thanks very much for this explanation, Guy.  I turned off TCP
> reassembly, and Wireshark then reported the following for every other
> packet from the NetApp: "Unreassembled Packet: NDMP".  So should I be
> assuming that NetApp, as an efficiency, stuffs multiple PDUs into the
> TCP segment,

NDMP packets could be bigger than the maximum TCP segment size on the  
network you're on (e.g., 1460 bytes on Ethernet with TCP-over-IPv4),  
in which case *any* NDMP implementation would have to split the NDMP  
packet across two or more TCP segments, even if there *aren't*  
multiple NDMP packets per TCP segment.

As for packing multiple NDMP PDUs into a TCP segment, if, for example,  
the receiving machine has its receive window on the connection shut at  
the time NDMP hands a PDU to TCP on the sending machine, the sending  
machine couldn't immediately send the PDU that had been handed to TCP,  
so its TCP will just buffer up the data for that PDU - and if another  
PDU is handed to TCP for that connection before the receiving opens  
its window, by the time the window opens up, there will be more than  
one PDU buffered up, and TCP will send whatever it chooses to send,  
which might include parts of more than one PDU.

The display you're reporting seems to imply that the NDMP packets take  
two TCP segments.

> and the Wireshark NDMP dissector hasn't been trained to
> decipher this?

No, you shouldn't, because the Wireshark dissector was changed ages  
ago (back when Wireshark was called Ethereal...) to handle that.

However, there might be a TCP reassembly bug, or there might be some  
other reason, such as packets not captured, preventing reassembly.

If you can, send us a capture with at least two of the "Unreassembled  
Packet: NDMP" packets, and at least two of the packets before them, so  
we can see which of those is the case.
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