Airtool Pi vs Wireshark

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.

Wireshark is a free network protocol analyzer for capturing and examining network traffic. It supports live capture and offline analysis through a graphical interface or the TShark terminal utility, and can inspect hundreds of protocols. Display filters narrow what appears during analysis, though their syntax differs from capture filters. Wireshark reads and writes capture formats including pcap and pcapng, and can decompress gzip-compressed files. Analysis features include VoIP tools, packet coloring rules, and exports to XML, PostScript, CSV, or plain text. It can decrypt traffic for protocols including IPsec, Kerberos, SSL/TLS, WEP, and WPA/WPA2. The software is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows under GNU General Public License version 2, with no license fee for the full version. Windows packages include Npcap, which is needed for live packet capture. What a capture can show depends on the operating system, capture library, network interface, and network configuration; switched networks may not expose unicast traffic between other ports. Community help is available through a Q&A site and users mailing list.