EtherApe is a network traffic browser.
It displays network activity graphically. It uses GNOME libraries as it’s user interface, and libpcap, a packet capture and filtering library.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Network traffic is displayed graphically. The more “talkative” a node is, the bigger its representation.
- Node and link color shows the most used protocol.
- User may select what level of the protocol stack to concentrate on.
- You may either look at traffic within your network, end to end IP, or even port to port TCP.
- Data can be captured “off the wire” from a live network connection, or read from a tcpdump capture file.
- Live data can be read from ethernet, FDDI, PPP, SLIP and WLAN interfaces, plus several other incapsulated formats (e.g. Linux cooked, PPI).
- The following frame and packet types are currently supported: ETH_II, 802.2, 803.3, IP, IPv6, ARP, X25L3, REVARP, ATALK, AARP, IPX, VINES, TRAIN, LOOP, VLAN, ICMP, IGMP, GGP, IPIP, TCP, EGP, PUP, UDP, IDP, TP, ROUTING, RSVP, GRE, ESP, AH, EON, VINES, EIGRP, OSPF, ENCAP, PIM, IPCOMP, VRRP; and most TCP and UDP services, like TELNET, FTP, HTTP, POP3, NNTP, NETBIOS, IRC, DOMAIN, SNMP, etc.
- Data display can be refined using a network filter using pcap syntax.
- Display averaging and node persistence times are fully configurable.
- Name resolution is done using standard libc functions, thus supporting DNS, hosts file, etc.
- Clicking on a node/link opens a detail dialog showing protocol breakdown and other traffic statistics.
- Protocol summary dialog shows global traffic statistics by protocol.
- Node summary dialog shows traffic statistics by node.
- Node statistics export to XML file.
- A single node can be centered on the display and several user-choosen nodes can be arranged in a inner circle with other nodes around.
- An alternative display mode arranges nodes in “columns”.
- Scrollkeeper/rarian-compatible manual integrated with yelp.
Website: etherape.sourceforge.io
Support: Code Repository
Developer: Juan Toledo, Vincent van Adrighem, Riccardo Ghetta, Eran Mann, Frederic Peters, Zev Weiss, and contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0

EtherApe is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
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|---|---|
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| sniffglue | Packet sniffer written in Rust |
| sniffer | Alternative network traffic sniffer |
| dsniff | Collection of tools for network auditing and penetration testing |
| ngrep | grep applied to the network layer |
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| Jomon | Network forensics and sniffer tool |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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