Jpcap

                           jpcap README

General Information

jpcap is a set of Java classes which provide an interface and system 
for network packet capture. A protocol library and tool for visualizing 
network traffic is included. 

jpcap hides the low-level details of network packet capture by 
abstracting many network packet types and protocols into Java classes. 
Internally, jpcap implements bindings to the libpcap system library 
through JNI (the Java Native Interface). 

jpcap utilizes libpcap, a widely deployed shared-library for capturing 
user-level packets. libpcap must be installed on your system in order 
to use jpcap.

jpcap consists of a small shared-library which wraps libpcap plus a 
collection of Java classes. The shared-library component provides event
hooks, communication and data conversion between a running Java VM and 
libpcap. The 'capture' package contains the core capture system.
The 'net' package contains abstractions for many network packet types 
and protocols. The 'simulator' package contains a network simulator.

jpcap is licensed under the Mozilla Public License. See docs/MPL-1.1.txt.

Running the Samples

If you have installed from RPM and are looking to run the capture tool,
try /usr/bin/jpcap.

If you installed from .gz, try ./jpcap.

jpcap can also be run in 'simulator' mode. In this mode, a pseudo
network interface randomly generates network traffic for capture.
The simulator can be enabled in properties/tool.properties.

Unix vs. Mac OS X vs. Windows

Active jpcap development is taking place on Unix platforms. However, 
jpcap should run on any platform where libpcap is implemented.

For building the jpcap library on Windows, the MinGW environment is 
recommended. Also, the Windows port of libpcap, known as winpcap, is 
required. For more information, have a look at docs/BUILD.windows.

jpcap on Mac OS X is supported. Refer to the file docs/BUILD.osx.

Application Developers (using the packet capture library in other apps)

If you are a Java developer interested in using jpcap to capture 
packets in an application you are developing, you need to do the 
following: 

  o In your Java CLASSPATH, include jars/net.sourceforge.jpcap-x.yy.zz.jar
    plus all jars found in thirdParty/jars.

  o Native bindings to libpcap are provided precompiled for intel Linux.
    The Java wrapper shared object is 
      src/java/net/sourceforge/jpcap/capture/libjpcap.so

    This file needs to be included in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
    If you are working on another platform, you'll need to 
    build the jpcap library and shared object yourself, see below.

  o All capture operations are performed using methods from the class
      net.sourceforge.jpcap.capture.PacketCapture

  o Javadocs are located in jars/javadoc_net.sourceforge.jpcap-x.yy.zz.jar

  o Examples are provided in the package net.sourceforge.jpcap.tutorial.

  
More specific documentation on the jpcap java packages can be found in 
src/java/net/sourceforge/jpcap/README.

If you checked out jpcap from the CVS repository and are looking 
for information on building the jpcap library in this tree, 
see docs/BUILD.[platform].

Additional information can be found on sourceforge.net, where 
the project was actively developed since 2001.

  http://www.sf.net/projects/jpcap

More recent development, more active development is occurring on github:

  http://www.github.com/jpcap

Contributing

If you are using jpcap and have made enhancements or bug fixes to the 
core capture library, please contribute them.

You can contribute by forking the project and sending a pull request
to http://www.github.com/jpcap.

If you've developed an application using jpcap, we're interested in 
hearing about it at jpcapadmin at ultrametrics dot net.

Happy Hacking!