Arkime vs TShark

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.

TShark is the Wireshark project's terminal-mode utility for capturing and analyzing network traffic. It can capture live packets or read saved captures, decode packet data for output, and write captures to a file. Its native capture format is pcapng, and it can read and write formats supported by Wireshark. Display filters use Wireshark syntax to select packets and protocol fields. Output formats include fields, JSON, PDML, and text; capture controls include interface selection, capture filters, packet limits, and ring-buffer files. TShark can write ElasticSearch mapping data or pipe packet output to another program or script. One constraint is that display filters are unavailable when capturing and saving packets with the -w option. The manual sets a 2 TB maximum capture-file size and notes potential issues above 2^32 packets. The Wireshark project is maintained by the Wireshark Foundation, a nonprofit supported by donations. TShark is free under GNU GPL version 2 and runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.