Sniffing Instaburst Packets

[stivberb]

Hi Devzone, 

I've been trying to verify and validate the performance of Instaburst mesh packets against regular ones. I modified a build of the mesh light switch example to send custom payloads between boards, and have been trying to sniff these payloads over the air. I have used an Ellisys tracker and Wireshark to do this, but I have only been able to see the normal mesh packet transmissions, and not when Instaburst is active. I am fairly certain that the Instaburst mesh packets are being sent correctly, however, as I have verified received transmissions on the server board by printing them out over JlinkRTT. 

I suspect I will not receive much advice with the Ellisys software, but is there a way to configure Wireshark such that I can view Instaburst packets?

(Note that I have setup Wireshark according to this, so it should be initially setup correctly)

Thanks

[Mttrinh]

Hi,

Unfortunately, you are not able to sniff the mesh packets when the instaburst feature is enabled. Instaburst packets are custom proprietary packets. Ellisys and Wireshark will not be able to show them.

[stivberb]

My understanding is that Instaburst uses standard BLE framing for the packets (i.e extended advertisements and regular mesh packet transmissions), just packaged into a proprietary Nordic payload. If this is the case, why is Wireshark or Ellisys not able to view these packets? 

Also, if it’s not possible to view packets using these tools, are there other tools available for me to test it’s functionality? How was the feature developed without the ability to view over the air packet transmissions? 

Thanks

[Mttrinh]

Hi,

This is a proprietary feature. You should be able to view the raw BLE packets (extended advertisements) with packet sniffers but these sniffers will not be able to tell you what they contain and how mesh PDUs are packed within them. So in a limited way you can use sniffers, but they will have major limitation for doing analysis of the mesh protocol operating using instaburst packets.

Sniffer was used during the development, and it should be possible to observe the raw packets using ellisys tracker.