Get IP version from packet data - c

Question

The pcap callback function returns the IP header and data as follows:
void packet_handler(u_char* param, const struct pcap_pkthdr* header, const u_char* pkt_data);
My understanding is the first 4 bits of the pkt_data is the IP version from which I can determine it is is IPv4 or IPv6. However, I've tried a few different ways to read the first 4 bits and I'm getting data that does not make sense.
For example, I defined the following structure:
struct ipdata {
u_char version : 4;
u_char dontcare : 4;
};
And then I tried to get the ip version using this code:
ipdata* pipdata;
pipdata = (ipdata*) pkt_data;
ip_ver = pipdata->version;
printf(" %d ", ip_ver);
The above method prints values of 3, 6, 9, 8 and 12. If I watch the traffic at the same time in Wireshark I see that most of the packets are IPv6.
Could someone who has done this clarify how would I go about reading the IP version?

Answer 1

Figure out the answer. Npcap returns the entire ethernet packet, so the first 14 bytes are the Ethernet header:
/* Length of the Ethernet Header (Data Link Layer) */
#define ETHERNET_HEADER_LEN 14
/* Ethernet addresses are 6 bytes */
#define ETHER_ADDR_LEN 6
/* Ethernet header */
struct sniff_ethernet {
u_char ether_dhost[ETHER_ADDR_LEN]; /* Destination host address (i.e. Destination MAC Address) */
u_char ether_shost[ETHER_ADDR_LEN]; /* Source host address (i.e. Source MAC Address) */
u_short ether_type; /* IP? ARP? RARP? etc */
};
You can figure out whether it is an IPv4 or IPv6 packet by looking at the ether_type in the above structure rather than the version in the IP header, such as:
/* Common ethernet types in Hex*/
#define ETHERNET_TYPE_IPv4 0x0800
#define ETHERNET_TYPE_IPv6 0x86DD
u_short eth_type;
ethernet = (struct sniff_ethernet*)(pkt_data);
eth_type = ntohs(ethernet->ether_type);
if (eth_type == ETHERNET_TYPE_IPv4) {
ipv4_handler(pkt_data);
}
else if (eth_type == ETHERNET_TYPE_IPv6)
{
ipv6_handler(pkt_data);
}
The IP header starts right after the ethernet header, so you can get it with code such as the following example for an IPv6 packet:
/* IPv6 header */
typedef struct ipv6_header
{
unsigned int
version : 4,
traffic_class : 8,
flow_label : 20;
uint16_t length;
uint8_t next_header;
uint8_t hop_limit;
struct in6_addr saddr;
struct in6_addr daddr;
} ipv6_header;
const ipv6_header* iph;
iph = (ipv6_header*)(pkt_data + ETHERNET_HEADER_LEN);
From there you can access the version and other information about the IP header. See this post for more information: Getting Npcap IPv6 source and destination addresses