termshark vs Xplico

termshark is a terminal interface for tshark, inspired by Wireshark, for inspecting packet captures and network traffic. It can read pcap files or sniff live interfaces when tshark is permitted, including on a remote machine where a capture need not be copied to a desktop. Users can apply Wireshark display filters, group conversations by protocol, and reassemble TCP and UDP streams. Packet search covers packet lists, structures and bytes, using text, regular expressions, hexadecimal input or display filters. The guide also describes importing a Wireshark column set when the configuration can be found, and transferring the current capture with Magic Wormhole. The project lists Linux, macOS, BSD variants, Android through Termux and Windows. It is free and MIT-licensed, and the project says its Go implementation builds as one executable on each platform. Packet analysis requires tshark 1.10.2 or higher in the user's PATH. The project notes that some tshark features are not yet exposed by termshark; the latest listed release is v2.4.0, dated July 11, 2022.

Xplico is free, open-source network forensic software that extracts application data from PCAP traffic captures. It can recover email, HTTP content, VoIP calls, and FTP or TFTP data, with protocol support for HTTP, SIP, IMAP, POP, SMTP, TCP, UDP, and IPv6. Port Independent Protocol Identification recognizes application protocols without depending on port numbers. Processing supports multithreading and realtime operation, although speed depends on flows, protocol types, and computer resources. Results can be written to files or SQLite and MySQL databases. A web interface lets concurrent users manage one or more cases, using SQLite, MySQL, or PostgreSQL as a backend. Modular capture, dissector, and dispatcher components can target files, databases, or network sockets. Downloads cover Fedora, CentOS/RHEL, and Ubuntu, alongside source code and a VirtualBox image. The free plan costs nothing; data-entry and input-file counts are unrestricted, with hard-drive size as the stated limit.