Seeing errors when treying to open pcap file in Wireshark

Question

I did some packet captures on my switch and then copied the pcap on to my laptop MAC. When I am trying to open the pcap on wireshark I am getting error:

The capture file appears to be damaged or corrupt.
(stanag4607: File has 976433722d-byte packet, bigger than maximum of 262144)

The pcaps are not corrupted they are of 14 KB size. I cannot reduce the size of my file as it has important captures. Any suggestions?

I have opened pcaps of more than 10KB in wireshark but not sure why this time I am unable to open them. I tried to search online but the answers online didn't resolve the issue

Answer 1

Your problem is not the size of the entire file with the captured data, but that the file contains at least one extremely long packet that exceeds every conceivable boundary. It cannot be parsed and therefore the file loading into Wireshark stops and ends with an error.

Normal single IP packet data size limit is 1500 B. Jumbo packet size limit is 9000 B and possibly 64000 B in special circumstances. But never close to 10e^10 B (ie 10000 millions bytes) as is in your case!

One packet in your case is many times larger than the entire set of captured data. This is a data error in the file that Wireshark cannot deal with. The probable cause is that.network data capture on the switch is either incorrect or in a different format than what Wireshark is able to load. Packet boundaries or packet sizes are evaluated incorrectly.

Solutions for future captured data

• Check and adjust the switch settings.
• Use port mirroring instead of directly capturing data on the switch. Store data from the mirror output port using Wireshark on your computer.

Solution for present failed file

• Try retrieving the captured data in other formats or by other application