Why we use winpcap

First, a capture system needs to bypass the operating systems's protocol stack in order to access the raw data transiting on the network.

This requires a portion running inside the kernel of OS, interacting directly with the network interface drivers. These drivers offer both basic features like packet capture and injection, as well as more advanced ones like a programmable filtering system and a monitoring engine. The first one can be used to restrict a capture session to a subset of the network traffic e. For the sake of the example, I will use Visual Studio in the following examples.

In what follows, we will present some simple examples of applications that use the WinPcap libraries. For more detailed tutorials, see the WinPcap documentation materials. Also, usually we intend to use WinPcap remote capabilities. Typically, the first thing we do when we use a WinPcap based application is to obtain the list of attached network adapters. In particular, name and description contain the name and a detailed description of the corresponding device.

In the following code, we obtain the network adapters and we print it on the screen. If no adapters are found, we print an error. Bob, Google will tell you a lot about WinPCap JRosenfeld Regular Contributor 5. Kudos 2 Stats. It certainly did not come with any MS updates. It is not a Microsoft product. AllenM Guru Norton Fighter Reg: Dec On to your original question.

If so that is where Winpcap came from. Windows update would not have installed this. Hope this helps. Best wishes. If WinPcap is there by itself then it can be safely uninstalled. Along with OP Hopefully, OP will determine and post back as to how Dear Forum Members Thanks very much for your replies and suggestions I have received regarding my query; I was honestly surprised by the avalanche of responses. Hi Bjm I will try to answer your questions as best I can to give you a fuller picture of what may or may not be a problem.

WinPcap 4. Hi Hugh I did google "WinPcap" before coming to the forum to find out if "WinPcap" was known as a rogue app or malware and I found the same thing you did, i. Once again, cheers for your help. Hi Bob, If you want, you can safely uninstall WinPcap since you indicate you did not install any of the applications such as Wireshark which needs it. Have you installed Firesheep in Firefox? That also uses it. Hi Allen, Hugh and Jack As Christmas is fast approaching, I have decided to hold off on my research for the moment but instead I have disabled the WinPcap exe file by renaming it old, i.

However, now that I have disabled WinPcap I'll see if one of the add-ons stops working. Jack, I've not installed Firesheep but I will now look it up to see what it does.

Thanks for all your help and advice. Well Hugh You are right, but it will tell me which add-on loaded this utility and that is the objective. Cheers UK Bob. Now, as this WinPcap is a network utility only some sort of download manager could be using it. The only download managers I know of, installed on my PC, are the add-ons within Firefox.

Hi Reese Thanks for your info, I used it to check the drivers on my USR dial up modem used for faxing and my Realtek network card broadband connection and I cannot find any driver with the name of WinPcap or rpcapd with or without the. I guess that I'll have to wait until something stops working or get some sort of error. This thread is closed from further comment. Please visit the forum to start a new thread. Related Posts I upgraded the free Norton Plus yesterday and got an email confirming this.

Next I got an email saying my Lifelock has been cancelled, which I certainly did not do. How can this be corrected?