hostap, ethereal and kismet.

[Andrea G Forte]

Hi all,

I am trying to sniff packets on the wireless interface using ethereal 
and a sniffer I wrote. Now, I know that if I am not interested in 802.11 
frames I can use promiscuous mode only without having to worry about 
monitor mode. This is exactly what my sniffer and ethereal do 
(promiscuous mode only). However, when I try to sniff packets on wlan0 
with ethereal as well as my sniffer, of 10 ARP requests that another 
computer on my network sends, I can only see one of them and sometimes I 
do not see any at all. If I want to see all of them I have to use kismet 
which uses monitor mode. But ARP requests are not 802.11 frames, so I am 
a little confused.
Do you know where the problem might be? Is this a bug of the hostap driver?
I will also send an email to the ethereal mailing list.

Thank you for your help,
Andrea