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https://github.com/chenjiandongx/sniffer
🤒 A modern alternative network traffic sniffer.
https://github.com/chenjiandongx/sniffer
cli gopacket networking packets pcap sniffer tcpdump traffic
Last synced: about 2 months ago
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🤒 A modern alternative network traffic sniffer.
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/chenjiandongx/sniffer
- Owner: chenjiandongx
- License: mit
- Created: 2021-11-08T15:36:03.000Z (almost 3 years ago)
- Default Branch: master
- Last Pushed: 2024-03-02T07:48:19.000Z (7 months ago)
- Last Synced: 2024-07-19T10:12:28.974Z (2 months ago)
- Topics: cli, gopacket, networking, packets, pcap, sniffer, tcpdump, traffic
- Language: Go
- Homepage:
- Size: 678 KB
- Stars: 719
- Watchers: 9
- Forks: 63
- Open Issues: 1
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE
Awesome Lists containing this project
README
# sniffer
[](https://godoc.org/github.com/chenjiandongx/sniffer)
[](https://goreportcard.com/report/github.com/chenjiandongx/sniffer)
[](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
> *A modern alternative network traffic sniffer inspired by [bandwhich](https://github.com/imsnif/bandwhich)(Rust) and [nethogs](https://github.com/raboof/nethogs)(C++).*
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/19553554/147360587-a3cfee18-7eb6-464b-9173-9afe6ee86cdf.mov
## Introduction
[中文介绍](https://chenjiandongx.me/2021/11/17/sniffer-network-traffic/)
sniffer is designed for network troubleshooting. It can be started at any time to analyze the processes or connections causing increases in network traffic without loading any kernel modules. By the way, the TUI of it is responsive that can fit with terminals of all sizes automatically.
sniffer manipulates [gopacket](https://github.com/google/gopacket) to sniff the interfaces and record packets' info. gopacket wraps the Golang port of `libpacp` library, and provides some additional features. One of the projects that inspired the sniffer is `bandwhich`, which has a sophisticated interface and multiple ways to display data, but it does not support BPF filters. Another one is `nethlogs`, which supports BPF filters, but can only view data by process, without connections or remote address perspective. sniffer combines the advantages of those two projects also adhering a new Plot mode.
***Connections and Process Matching***
On Linux, sniffer refers to the ways in which the [ss](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/ss.8.html) tool used, obtaining the connections of the `ESTABLISHED` state by [netlink socket](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/netlink.7.html). Since that approach is more efficient than reading the `/proc/net/*` files directly. But both need to aggregate and calculate the network traffic of the process by matching the `inode` information under `/proc/${pid}/fd`.
On macOS, the [lsof](https://ss64.com/osx/lsof.html) command is invoked, which relies on capturing the command output for analyzing process connections information. And sniffer manipulates the API provided by [gopsutil](https://github.com/shirou/gopsutil) directly on Windows.
## Installation
***sniffer*** relies on the `libpcap` library to capture user-level packets hence you need to have it installed first.
### Linux / Windows
**Debian/Ubuntu**
```shell
$ sudo apt-get install libpcap-dev
```
**CentOS/Fedora**
```shell
$ sudo yum install libpcap libpcap-devel
```
**Windows**
Windows need to have [npcap](https://nmap.org/npcap/) installed for capturing packets.
After that, install sniffer by `go get` command.
```shell
$ go get -u github.com/chenjiandongx/sniffer
```
### MacOS
```shell
$ brew install sniffer
```
## Usages
```shell
❯ sniffer -h
# A modern alternative network traffic sniffer.
Usage:
sniffer [flags]
Examples:
# bytes mode in MB unit
$ sniffer -u MB
# only capture the TCP protocol packets with lo,eth prefixed devices
$ sniffer -b tcp -d lo -d eth
Flags:
-a, --all-devices listen all devices if present
-b, --bpf string specify string pcap filter with the BPF syntax (default "tcp or udp")
-d, --devices-prefix stringArray prefixed devices to monitor (default [en,lo,eth,em,bond])
-h, --help help for sniffer
-i, --interval int interval for refresh rate in seconds (default 1)
-l, --list list all devices name
-m, --mode int view mode of sniffer (0: bytes 1: packets 2: plot)
-n, --no-dns-resolve disable the DNS resolution
-u, --unit string unit of traffic stats, optional: B, Kb, KB, Mb, MB, Gb, GB (default "KB")
-v, --version version for sniffer
```
**Hotkeys**
| Keys | Description |
| ---- | ----------- |
| Space | pause refreshing |
| Tab | rearrange tables |
| s | switch next view mode |
| q | quit |
## Performance
[iperf](https://github.com/esnet/iperf) is a tool for active measurements of the maximum achievable bandwidth on IP networks. Next we use this tool to forge massive packets on the `lo` device.
```shell
$ iperf -s -p 5001
$ iperf -c localhost --parallel 40 -i 1 -t 2000
```
***sniffer vs bandwhich vs nethogs***
As you can see, CPU overheads `bandwhich > sniffer > nethogs`, memory overheads `sniffer > nethogs > bandwhich`.
```shell
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
128405 root 20 0 210168 5184 3596 S 31.0 0.3 1:21.69 bandwhich
128596 root 20 0 1449872 21912 8512 S 20.7 1.1 0:28.54 sniffer
128415 root 20 0 18936 7464 6900 S 5.7 0.4 0:11.56 nethogs
```
See what stats they show, sniffer and bandwhich output are very approximate(~ 2.5GB/s). netlogs can only handles packets 1.122GB/s.
| | sniffer | bandwhich | nethogs |
| -- | ------- | --------- | ------- |
| **Upload** | 2.5GiBps | 2.5GiBps | 1.12GiBps |
## View Mode
***Bytes Mode:*** display traffic stats in bytes by the Table widget.
***Packets Mode:*** display traffic stats in packets by the Table widget.
## License
MIT [©chenjiandongx](https://github.com/chenjiandongx)