seladb/PcapPlusPlus

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

3131 stars · 753 forks observed · 2026-08-28

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

PcapPlusPlus is a multiplatform C++ library for capturing, parsing, and crafting network packets. It wraps popular packet processing engines like libpcap, Npcap, WinPcap, DPDK, eBPF AF_XDP, WinDivert, and PF_RING, and supports reading/writing PCAP and PCAPNG files.

Use cases

• parse network packets from a pcap file in C++
• capture live network traffic on Linux or Windows
• craft and send custom network packets
• analyze network protocols for forensics
• reassemble TCP streams from captured packets
• build a high-performance packet processing tool with DPDK
• read and write pcapng files programmatically

When to choose

• you need a fast, cross-platform C++ library for packet capture, parsing, or crafting
• you want wrappers over libpcap, Npcap, DPDK, AF_XDP, or PF_RING with a unified API
• you need to read/write PCAP and PCAPNG files in C++
• you're building network forensics, monitoring, or security tooling

When to avoid

• you need a high-level scripting solution (Python's Scapy may fit better)
• your project is not in C++ and you don't want bindings or a C++ toolchain
• you need GUI-based packet analysis like Wireshark provides

Facets

library · maturity stable

parser networking developer-tools networking security developer-tools windows bsd cpp cross-platform packet-capture packet-parsing packet-crafting pcap pcapng dpdk pf-ring af-xdp npcap libpcap tcp-reassembly network-forensics c-plus-plus linux macos android

Member repositories

For agents

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