Airtool Pi vs netsniff-ng

Airtool Pi is an iPhone and iPad utility for remote Wi-Fi packet capture. It connects over SSH to Linux-based sensors or Linux endpoints with compatible adapters, starts a capture using selected settings, and saves a PcapNG file locally. Sensors can be added manually or automatically, including WLAN Pi and Oscium Nomad; version history also names WLAN Pi Go and Hamina Clip, and a Raspberry Pi can serve as a sensor. Capture controls include wireless interface, frequency band, channel, channel width, size limits, and an option to discard data-frame payloads. The App Store listing states support for 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz bands and widths from 20 to 320 MHz. Compatible adapters allow simultaneous capture on up to four channels. Files can be shared with Wireshark or another protocol analyzer. Airtool Pi costs $14.99 USD once and requires iOS or iPadOS 18.6 or later.

netsniff-ng is a free Linux network analyzer and toolkit for network development, debugging, analysis, auditing, and reconnaissance. It captures, analyzes, replays, and redirects traffic using zero-copy packet mechanisms, with live capture, command-line operation, display filters, and offline trace analysis. Supported capture files include tcpdump-capable pcap, a nanosecond-resolution tcpdump-capable variant, Alexey Kuznetzov's pcap, and netsniff-ng pcap. Low- and high-level filtering include Berkeley Packet Filter expressions. The toolkit combines netsniff-ng, trafgen, mausezahn, ifpps, curvetun, astraceroute, flowtop, and bpfc. Its dissector covers Ethernet, WLAN, ARP, MPLS, VLAN, LLDP, IPv4, IPv6, ICMP, IGMP, TCP, and UDP. Mausezahn and curvetun are experimental and not advised for production. The toolkit is GPL 2.0 open source. Release checks use Git tags and GPG signatures; support is through a mailing list and online FAQ.