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Compress capture file creates issues?

asked 2020-10-20 16:45:04 +0000

jmof217@gmail.com gravatar image

Is there issues related to using zip to compress a capture file? Is it a normal practice and is there any data loss when done from windows zip?

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answered 2020-10-20 21:00:49 +0000

Jaap gravatar image

First of all ZIP is a lossless data compression format, so no, there is no data loss compressing a capture file.

For archiving purposes it may be beneficial to compress a capture file, so that it takes less space in storage, obviously.

Wireshark can read compressed capture files straight from disk. It uses ZLib for this, so unless the Windows ZIP implementation does something non-standard that should be fine.

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There's Zip format and there's gzip format. Wireshark can read gzip format, using zlib; it can't read Zip format.

Guy Harris gravatar imageGuy Harris ( 2020-10-26 22:40:20 +0000 )edit
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answered 2020-10-26 22:06:59 +0000

André gravatar image

If you use gzip compression, instead of zip, Wireshark is able to read the compressed file directly. Both gzip and zip uses lossless data compression, thus no data loss.

You may use a tool like 7zip to create gzip compressed files on Windows.

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Asked: 2020-10-20 16:45:04 +0000

Seen: 906 times

Last updated: Oct 26 '20