Analyze network traffic with Sniffnet Traffic Monitor

Network traffic remains a closed book for many users. Sniffnet lets less experienced users monitor their network traffic with ease.

- Erik Bärwaldt

Monitoring network traffic is part of the admin’s daily grind. Most admins use the graphical Wireshark tool because of its wealth of functions as well as its availability in most distributions’ respositories. Because Wireshark is primarily aimed at professional users, you need in-depth network knowledge to use it. The new Sniffnet project targets less experienced users, providing meaningful results in a simple, intuitive, and clearcut interface.

Installation

Sniffnet is a cross-platform Rust application [1]. If you don’t have the Rust programming language on your system, first set it up with the command from line 2 of Listing 1. The installation routine requires some interactive input and prints some status messages at the prompt. You install Sniffnet itself in the terminal using the Rust package manager, Cargo (line 4).

If you are using a Linux distribution with a DEB package manager, you can install the precompiled DEB package [2] from the project’s GitHub page instead; this removes the need to implement Rust first (line 6).

For the program to work correctly, you will definitely need to resolve some dependencies [3] (line 8), regardless of the installation path. When done, call Sniffnet with the sudo sniffnet command.