For any technical and/or maintenance information, please kindly refer to the Official Documentation.
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.
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 uses streaming strategy to read input files. That is to read frame by frame, decrease occupation on memory, as well as enhance efficiency in some way.
In pcapkit, all files can be described as following eight parts.
Interface (
pcapkit.interface)User interface for the
pcapkitlibrary, 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
pcapkitimplementation, mainly for internal data structure and processing.ToolKit (
pcapkit.toolkit)Auxiliary tools for
pcapkitto support the multiple extraction engines with a unified interface.DumpKit (
pcapkit.dumpkit)File output formatters for
pcapkit.Constants (
pcapkit.const)Constant enumerations used in
pcapkitfor protocol family extraction and representation.
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.
| Operating System | macOS Ventura 13.4.1 |
| Chip | Apple M2 Pro |
| Memory | 16 GB |
| Engine | Performance (ms per packet) |
|---|---|
dpkt | 0.010390_056723 |
scapy | 0.091690_233567 |
pcapkit | 0.200390_390390 |
pyshark | 24.682185_018351 |
Note
pcapkit supports Python versions since 3.6.
Simply run the following to install the current version from PyPI:
pip install pypcapkitOr install the latest version from the gi repository:
git clone https://github.com/JarryShaw/PyPCAPKit.git cd pypcapkit pip install -e . # and to update at any time git pullAnd since pcapkit supports various extraction engines, and extensive plug-in functions, you may want to install the optional ones:
# 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 pysharkFor CLI usage, you will need to install the optional packages:
pip install pypcapkit[cli] # or explicitly... pip install pypcapkit emoji