Welcome to jNetPcap SDK. jNetPcap is a java software development kit for network administrators, protocol developers, network software engineers and university level students. The basic function of jNetPcap is to provide a java wrapper to popular libpcap library for capturing network packets. The SDK also provides additional capabilities not found in the original native libpcap project.

jNetPcap project at this time, does not provide any pre built applications such as packet sniffer, security monitors, firewalls or any other applications that libpcap is typically used for. It is a pure library that makes the job of creating such applications much easier.

The additional capabilities are nicely incorporated, but are not essential for the proper usage of libpcap API. The project is made up of a java library, a native shared library (a .dll on win32 systems and .so file on unix based systems.) This library provides the interface (JNI bridge) between java world and native platform software and libpcap library itself. The software also requires a separate installation of the libpcap software on both unix and win32 systems. Please see Chapter 1 for more information on installation issues ([still under construction].)

To get started you may want to start with Chapter 1 which goes through all the basics. Chapter 2 goes over the core libpcap wrapper API and its usage. Chapter 3 discusses the "Protocol Decoding Framework", an extension that is not part of libpcap library, but a jNetPcap additional functionality. Specifically jNetPcap SDK provides sophisticated packet decoding capabilities and many supplied protocols. Chapter 4 goes into more implementation detail and discusses many important issues that every programmer needs to address and plan for in hers or his project. Performance and resource usage are essential in choosing the right architecture for your application.

Do not hesitate to ask questions at either project website's forum or as comments on any of these book pages of this user guide.

Here is the link to project website, if you are not reading this page from the original webserver: http://jnetpcap.com