BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Kai Harrekilde — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 11:52:33 GMT

I have plenty of logs. I'll make sure to reproduce it today and send you a fresh one.

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Hung Bui — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 11:47:20 GMT

The issue with the event counter supposed to be fixed with the unofficial FW. Could you provide a sniffer trace when issue occurs ?

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Kai Harrekilde — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 11:42:49 GMT

@Hung, I still see the 16-bit packet counter issue as described by Karl-E. If I get more than 65535 packets in a single session, I get errors in the log file. This is with the unofficial FW.

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Hung Bui — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 11:37:25 GMT

@KAI: Could you describe the issue you have ? Some time I got "UART read timeout" but the sniffer still worked fine.

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Kai Harrekilde — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 17:28:52 GMT

@Hung Bui: I'm also seeing this issue (UART read timeout). nRF51-Dongle (PCA10031) module with the 1.0.1_1111 sniffer software. I programmed the unofficial SNIFF150 FW that you posted here, but I still get this issue.

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Hung Bui — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 13:03:04 GMT

I would suggest you next time to try with a phone, Android or iOS and also with our nRFMaster Control Panel on PC.

In the log on my PC here I am seeing the same info report

16-Jun-2015 13:28:17 (W. Europe Daylight Time) INFO: gap in packets, between 65535 and 0 packet before: [6, 19, 1, 255, 255, 6, 10, 11, 31, 43, 142, 248, 21, 28, 0, 0, 165, 67, 101, 80, 1, 0, 41, 242, 246] packet after: [6, 19, 1, 0, 0, 6, 10, 9, 31, 43, 142, 248, 151, 0, 0, 0, 165, 67, 101, 80, 5, 0, 250, 244, 246]

But the sniffer managed to follow the connection with no issue.

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Karl-E. — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 12:47:53 GMT

I use custom devices based on the Alpwise BLE Stack. I'm not able to do another trace in the moment, but I remember the channel map update event being the last event in a former trace. And yes, the connection is kept.

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Hung Bui — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 12:42:51 GMT

@Karl-E: Sorry that I missed that part that you tried with Wireshark v1.10 already. There was only 20 advertising packets, and I believe we only count the packets we received. So still it's pretty strange number.

Which central device did you use for testing ? Could you update another trace ? In your trace I saw that the last packet from the central was a channel map update. If this appear to be the same on other trace then it could tell something.

I assume that the connection was kept, independent of the issue on the sniffer ?

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Karl-E. — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 12:20:15 GMT

Hi! As I mentioned, I already did that v1.10 test - without success. Regarding the number of packets: I suspect that only packets within the connection count. There are also advertising packets and lost packets (see log) - so the counter stops somewhere above 65xxx. I even tried a connection which I stopped at around 32000 packets. Then re-connected and about 65xxx packets later the protocol stopped...

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Hung Bui — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 12:12:03 GMT

@Karl-E: I will report your issue to the developers.

Could you try with Wireshark v1.10 to see if that helps?

In your trace it actually stopped at packet 69459, so might be it's not related to the size of unsigned short. I haven't seen this issue reported before.

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Karl-E. — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 06:57:34 GMT

Hi and thanks for the quick reply! I did another test using Wireshark 1.10. Same results: Scanning stopped after a while.

I attached the sniffer log file and the pcapng file.

log.txt

Capture_stopped.pcapng

Also a sniffer log file from an attempt, when the sniffer crashed (only happened once, but it may contain a hint?!) log-sniffer-crashed.txt

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Hung Bui — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 14:25:55 GMT

Hi Karl-E,

I attached here the trace I just recorded. It passed 90k packets but haven't got issue. Only one connect session, connection interval was 7.5ms. I used Wireshark v1.10. Could that be the reason ?

test.pcapng

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Karl-E. — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 13:05:30 GMT

Yes, the Wireshark also stopped (without any message - so I looked it up in the logfile). I did some additional testing: 65535 is not a problem "in general". The problem only occurs when all data is produced within one connected session. (We use a 10ms connection intervall with data transmitted every interval - so we reach 0xFFFF packets within under 5 minutes.) When I cut the connection within the 65535 packets and re-connect, more than 65536 packets will be displayed in Wireshark (though the problem will occur later if the transmission continues within the same connection).

RE: BLE sniffer limited to 65535 packets?

Hung Bui — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 11:08:56 GMT

@Kark-E: Did the trace on Wireshark also stopped at packet #65535 ? I believe the packet number in the log is just for internal use and should not cause any packet missing or hanging.

I was trying here and haven't seen any issue on wireshark capturing more than 65535 packets.