netsniff-ng is a performant network analyzer and networking toolkit. It’s described as the Swiss army knife for network packets.
The gain of performance is reached by built-in zero-copy mechanisms, so that on packet reception and transmission the kernel does not need to copy packets from kernel space to user space, and vice versa.
The netsniff-ng toolkit’s primary usage goal is to facilitate a network developer’s / hacker’s daily Linux plumbing. It can be used for network development, debugging, analysis, auditing or network reconnaissance.
The netsniff-ng toolkit consists of the following utilities:
- netsniff-ng, a fast zero-copy analyzer, pcap capturing and replaying tool.
- Fast network analyzer based on packet mmap mechanisms.
- Record pcap files to disc, replay them and also do an offline and online analysis.
- Capturing, analysis or replay of raw 802.11 frames are supported as well.
- pcap files are also compatible with tcpdump or Wireshark traces.
- Processes those pcap traces either in scatter-gather I/O or by mmap I/O.
- trafgen, a multithreaded low-level zero-copy network packet generator.
- mausezahn, high-level packet generator for HW/SW appliances with Cisco-CLI.
- bpfc, a Berkeley Packet Filter compiler, Linux BPF JIT disassembler.
- ifpps, a top-like kernel networking statistics tool.
- flowtop, a top-like netfilter connection tracking tool.
- curvetun, a lightweight curve25519-based IP tunnel.
- astraceroute, an autonomous system (AS) trace route utility.
Website: netsniff-ng.org
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: netsniff-ng developers
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
netsniff-ng is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Network Analyzers | |
|---|---|
| Wireshark | Network protocol analyzer with a rich and powerful feature set |
| Sniffnet | Visualise live network traffic with a friendly interface |
| Kismet | Wireless network and device detector, sniffer, wardriving tool |
| Ettercap | Comprehensive suite for man in the middle attacks |
| IPTraf-ng | Feature-laden network statistic monitoring tool |
| Zeek | Network security monitoring with deep traffic insight |
| netsniff-ng | Swiss army knife for daily Linux network plumbing |
| Kyanos | Networking analysis tool using eBPF |
| Arkime | Indexes full packet captures for rapid, large-scale traffic investigation |
| EtherApe | Graphical network monitor |
| darkstat | Captures network traffic, calculates usage statistics, and serves reports |
| justniffer | Network TCP packet sniffer with reliable TCP flow rebuilding |
| tcpflow | TCP/IP packet demultiplexer |
| tcpdump | Powerful and hugely respected command-line packet analyzer |
| sniffglue | Packet sniffer written in Rust |
| sniffer | Alternative network traffic sniffer |
| RustNet | Terminal monitor for connections and bandwidth |
| Malcolm | Traffic analysis suite for capture, hunting and forensics |
| dsniff | Collection of tools for network auditing and penetration testing |
| ngrep | grep applied to the network layer |
| Network Monitor | Rreal-time network connection monitoring tool |
| sniffit | CORBA based sniffer system with ncurses interactive mode |
| Jomon | Network forensics and sniffer tool |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form. |
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.