Nit(4) picking

[Roy Smith]

I'm trying to use NIT(4P) under SunOS-3.5.2, but the documentation is, how
shall I put it, less than crystal clear.  Can somebody explain to me how
it works?  I followed the example in the man page, and can grab packets
off the wire, but can't decode them in any way that makes sense.  I
suspect that somehow I'm starting to decode at the wrong place in the
buffer; I really can't figure out for the life of me what nioc_chunksize,
nioc_snaplen, nioc_bufalign, and nioc_buffoffset mean.

I also can't figure out what values go in the nh_state part of the nit
header.  The packet I'm looking at right now has 5 there, which according
to the man page means "sequence number of chunk" but I can't assign any
useful meaning to that sequence of english words in this context.

Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
roy at alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy