Re: Using socket instead of pcap

....wow, ok. What I was asking was whether it was possible, not for someone to write the code for me, but upon re-reading my OP I guess that wasn't as clear as I thought it was. I tried to find examples online of how to do it but couldn't find any that didn't use pcap. And I didn't post any code because I don't have any, beyond creating the Socket object and binding it to a port.

Comment on Re: Using socket instead of pcap

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Re^2: Using socket instead of pcap by rowdog (Curate) on May 07, 2010 at 04:34 UTC
I suppose it might be theoretically possible to write a pure Perl replacement for libpcap. Of course, you'd have to know all the intimate details of network protocols and *nix and even then you would likely find that your Perl ran too slow to be useful in real time analysis of busy networks. So, you profile and find the slow parts which you convert to XS aka C and when you're done, you'll probably find that you've recreated a vastly inferior version of libpcap. If you know the protocols, OS details and Perl well enough to pull this off, you should already know the answer to this question. Use libpcap and enjoy standing on the shoulders of giants.	[reply]

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Re^2: Using socket instead of pcap
by rowdog (Curate) on May 07, 2010 at 04:34 UTC

I suppose it might be theoretically possible to write a pure Perl replacement for libpcap. Of course, you'd have to know all the intimate details of network protocols and *nix and even then you would likely find that your Perl ran too slow to be useful in real time analysis of busy networks. So, you profile and find the slow parts which you convert to XS aka C and when you're done, you'll probably find that you've recreated a vastly inferior version of libpcap.

If you know the protocols, OS details and Perl well enough to pull this off, you should already know the answer to this question. Use libpcap and enjoy standing on the shoulders of giants.

[reply]