EtherApe is a packet sniffer

Packet sniffer

A packet analyzer is a computer program or a piece of computer hardware that can intercept and log traffic passing over a digital network or part of a network...

/network traffic monitoring tool, developed for Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

. EtherApe is free

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

, open source software developed under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

.

Functionality

Network traffic is displayed using a graphical interface. Each node represents a specific host. Links represent connections to hosts. Nodes and links are color coded to represent different protocols forming the various types of traffic on the network. Individual nodes and their connecting links grow and shrink in size with increases and decreases in network traffic.

History

Originally authored by Juan Toledo, the first version of EtherApe (version 0.0.1) was released on February 18, 2000. In a 2006 survey, Insecure.org named EtherApe number 43 on its list of the "Top 100 Network Security

Network security

In the field of networking, the area of network security consists of the provisions and policies adopted by the network administrator to prevent and monitor unauthorized access, misuse, modification, or denial of the computer network and network-accessible resources...

 Tools". The most recent version of EtherApe, authored by Riccardo Ghetta, is 0.9.12 and was released on May 31, 2011..

Features

Some of the features listed about EtherApe include (the following list refers to version 0.9.12 of EtherApe):

• graphical network traffic display
• color coded node and links for most used protocols
• traffic may be viewed on one's own network, end to end (IP) or port to port (TCP)
• a variety of frame and packet types are supported
• data view can be manipulated using a network filter
• clicking a node or link provides additional information regarding including protocol and traffic information
• summary protocol and node table
• can read traffic from a file or an actual network
• handles traffic on Ethernet
  Ethernet
  Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
  
  , WLAN, VLAN plus several other media and encapsulation types
• supports both IPv4
  IPv4
  Internet Protocol version 4 is the fourth revision in the development of the Internet Protocol and the first version of the protocol to be widely deployed. Together with IPv6, it is at the core of standards-based internetworking methods of the Internet...
  
   and IPv6
  IPv6
  Internet Protocol version 6 is a version of the Internet Protocol . It is designed to succeed the Internet Protocol version 4...
  
  
• XML
  XML
  Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
  
  export of node statistics

Security

EtherApe requires root privileges to run. As such, there can be risks to the machine(s) running EtherApe when connected to the internet.