Arkime vs netsniff-ng

Arkime is a free, open-source network analysis and session search tool that passively observes traffic and creates searchable session records. It parses layers 3–7 and indexes fields including protocols, DNS names, HTTP headers, TLS/JA4 fingerprints, file hashes, and GeoIP in OpenSearch or Elasticsearch. Operators can store full packets in standard PCAP format or use metadata-only capture, with rules to select traffic for saving. Users can search sessions, inspect packet data, and export results as PCAP or CSV. Cont3xt enriches supported indicators using commercial and OSINT sources, including VirusTotal, Censys, and Shodan; phone enrichment is limited to the U.S. Parliament groups clusters and displays cluster issues and Elasticsearch health. Capture can scale by adding machines or increasing CPU and disk. Arkime has no license fees or paid-only features. Installation guidance covers Linux, recommends Debian or Ubuntu LTS, and links to a container guide. OpenSearch or Elasticsearch is required for session metadata. Authentication options include basic, form, digest, header, and OIDC, while the project advises against anonymous authentication.

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.