PyPCAPKit - Comprehensive Network Packet Analysis Library

For any technical and/or maintenance information, please kindly refer to the |docs|_.

.. |docs| replace:: Official Documentation .. _docs: https://jarryshaw.github.io/PyPCAPKit/

The PyPCAPKit project is an open source Python program focus on network packet parsing and analysis, which works as a comprehensive PCAP_ file extraction, construction and analysis library.

The whole project supports Python 3.6 or later.

About

PyPCAPKit is a comprehensive Python-native network packet analysis library, with DictDumper_ as its formatted output dumper.

Unlike popular PCAP file extractors, such as Scapy, DPKT, PyShark_, and etc, pcapkit is designed to be much more comprehensive, which means it is able to provide more detailed information about the packet, as well as a more Pythonic interface for users to interact with.

Module Structure

In pcapkit, all files can be described as following eight parts.

• Interface (pcapkit.interface)

  User interface for the pcapkit library, which standardises and simplifies the usage of this library.

• Foundation (pcapkit.foundation)

  Synthesises file I/O and protocol analysis, coordinates information exchange in all network layers, as well as provides the foundamental functions for pcapkit.

• Protocols (pcapkit.protocols)

  Collection of all protocol family, with detailed implementation and methods.

• Utilities (pcapkit.utilities)

  Auxiliary functions and tools for pcapkit.

• CoreKit (pcapkit.corekit)

  Core utilities for pcapkit implementation, mainly for internal data structure and processing.

• ToolKit (pcapkit.toolkit)

  Auxiliary tools for pcapkit to support the multiple extraction engines with a unified interface.

• DumpKit (pcapkit.dumpkit)

  File output formatters for pcapkit.

• Constants (pcapkit.const)

  Constant enumerations used in pcapkit for protocol family extraction and representation.

Engine Comparison

Due to the general overhead of pcapkit, its extraction procedure takes around 0.2 milliseconds per packet, which is already impressive but not enough comparing to other popular extration engines availbale on the market, given the fact that pcapkit is a comprehensive packet processing module.

Additionally, pcapkit introduced alternative extractionengines to accelerate this procedure. By now pcapkit supports Scapy, DPKT, and PyShark_.

Test Environment

.. list-table::

   * - Operating System
     - macOS Ventura 13.4.1
   * - Chip
     - Apple M2 Pro
   * - Memory
     - 16 GB

Test Results
~~~~~~~~~~~~

============= ===========================
Engine        Performance (ms per packet)
============= ===========================
``dpkt``       0.010390_056723
``scapy``      0.091690_233567
``pcapkit``    0.200390_390390
``pyshark``   24.682185_018351
============= ===========================

------------
Installation
------------

.. note::

   ``pcapkit`` supports Python versions **since 3.6**.

Simply run the following to install the current version from PyPI:

.. code-block:: shell

   pip install pypcapkit

Or install the latest version from the gi repository:

.. code-block:: shell

   git clone https://github.com/JarryShaw/PyPCAPKit.git
   cd pypcapkit
   pip install -e .
   # and to update at any time
   git pull

And since ``pcapkit`` supports various extraction engines, and extensive
plug-in functions, you may want to install the optional ones:

.. code-block:: shell

   # for DPKT only
   pip install pypcapkit[DPKT]
   # for Scapy only
   pip install pypcapkit[Scapy]
   # for PyShark only
   pip install pypcapkit[PyShark]
   # and to install all the optional packages
   pip install pypcapkit[all]
   # or to do this explicitly
   pip install pypcapkit dpkt scapy pyshark

For CLI usage, you will need to install the optional packages:

.. code-block:: shell

   pip install pypcapkit[cli]
   # or explicitly...
   pip install pypcapkit emoji

.. _PCAP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pcap
.. _Scapy: https://scapy.net
.. _DPKT: https://dpkt.readthedocs.io
.. _PyShark: https://kiminewt.github.io/pyshark
.. _DictDumper: https://github.com/JarryShaw/DictDumper