libpnet/libpnet

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

2588 stars · 330 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

libpnet is a cross-platform Rust library for low-level networking, providing safe packet construction and parsing, transport protocol implementation, and direct data link layer access. It combines C-level performance with Rust's memory and thread safety.

Use cases

• build a custom transport protocol in Rust
• parse and manipulate raw network packets
• send and receive packets at the data link layer
• implement tools like ping or traceroute
• capture packets on the wire for network diagnostics
• do packet-level traffic shaping

When to choose

• you need raw packet access or custom protocol implementation in Rust
• you want C-level networking performance with memory safety
• you're building network diagnostics, capture, or traffic-shaping utilities

When to avoid

• you only need standard TCP/UDP sockets, which std or higher-level crates handle
• you're working in a language other than Rust
• you need a full packet-capture application rather than a library

Facets

library · maturity stable

networking parser serialization networking developer-tools security windows rust cross-platform packet-crafting datalink raw-sockets packet-capture transport-protocols winpcap linux macos

Member repositories

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="libpnet/libpnet")