Why does Traffic generator tools use libpcap library?

0
votes

libpcap is a packet capture library. It makes sense to me that packet sniffers/analyzers use it since they capture network traffic and analyze it. Why does a packet generator e.g Ostinato use libpcap? As far as I know, traffic generators do not need to capture packet traffic.

Please help me clarify the confusion.

Thank you.

2
c++networkinglibpcap
just because it's called pcap(ture), doesn't that capturing is ALL that the library does... – Marc B

2 Answers

2
votes

libpcap is a packet capture library.

It's also, as of libpcap 0.9 (it's currently up to 1.4), a packet injection library, with pcap_inject() and pcap_sendpacket() APIs (two APIs for backwards compatibility with OpenBSD and WinPcap, but the difference is trivial).

1
votes

As the creator of Ostinato, just want to highlight two things -

  1. libpcap/winpcap is not just a packet capture library but also a packet injection library; most importantly, it is cross platform
  2. Ostinato (and other traffic generators) support packet capture as well as packet generation

So libpcap/winpcap was an obvious choice for Ostinato