Replies: 25 comments 25 replies
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I'll go first. My name is Dan Nagle. I wrote and open sourced Packet Sender on GitHub in 2015. At the time I started the project, I was working in the network AV industry. I needed a quick and simple way to correctly send custom UDP and TCP commands to devices to help test them. I also needed to receive unsolicited packets to test the device clients. Nothing out there did it quite right, or it did too complicated. Later on, I needed SSL support too. I eventually decided to create my own from scratch. I had a wishlist, and this list still guides the project:
I want to be able to download, run, and train a new user of the tool in under 5 minutes. This is actually how Packet Sender Cloud was started -no jump drive needed. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. |
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Hi Dan - Thanks, R.White |
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Not via the desktop GUI. It always requests a dynamic port. The command line has a |
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Hey Dan! I'm a college student working on a senior design project for FPGA's. I'm interested to know if Packet Sender has the ability to send a stream of packets continuously. If that is possible, the next question would be - is it possible to borrow this stream of packets from a secondary source? In my project, the most success achievable would be a demonstration of the FPGA accepting a continuous stream of pseudo-random bitstream data. I don't expect Packet Sender to natively have this function integrated, but I am interested in the ability to take data from a rand() function, or a PRBS compliant equation (such as https://blog.kurttomlinson.com/posts/prbs-pseudo-random-binary-sequence). As a side note, I know this has to be said in open source - I am not asking you to actually code (I am fluent in C++) any of this, just investigating what capacities the software currently has, and if you could point me to the right direction in the code base. I'd be more than happy to push changes upstream if these are features that are not present and you think should be. Thanks! |
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You didn't specify UDP or TCP. TCP will be a bit harder to get Packet Sender features to what you need.
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Hi, I was wondering if there is a way to clear the saved packets when the program is closed other than manually deleting them. The reason is that I will have multiple database files but with different number of saved files and with different names, which need to be sent just once before closing OR opening a new database. I see will overwrite existing ones of the same name. The only way I see at the moment is to have all with the same number of saved packets with sequential names the same and just have blanks in the un-needed ones. |
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Not quite sure what you are trying to do, but it may be easier to use the portable version of Packet Sender. You could have several copies and make desktop shortcuts going to each executable. If that won't work, you could make some kind of launcher script. Instead of wiping the database when it closes, you would wipe it just before launching. Packets are stored in |
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I should have said I have no programming/scripting experience but I will give it a try (learning by trying). What I am trying to do long term is send multiple commands to multiple IP's (like inkjets / bar code readers) with the data being pulled from a database with a single key press. Thanks for the tip. Matty |
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Hello Dan, I am searching for a solution to controlling PTZ cameras with IP VISCA commands with keyboard shortcuts via autohotkey. I think I should be able to do this by having auto hot key paste the commands within the command prompt interface, the only problem is that i am having trouble opening the command prompt interface. Could you walk me through the process? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, |
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@jttttav Some CLI examples can be found (near the bottom) in the documentation:
Also, the GUI was built to support autohotkey if that is easier. Send the GUI Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, etc. depending on what you are trying to accomplish. |
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Hello Dan, Could you please direct me to the link where its architecture is detailed? Thanks! |
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The documentation is located here: https://packetsender.com/documentation |
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Hi Dan, How to send data using packetsender DLL from an application? How to call DLL function to send this data? Thanks, |
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Hello, and welcome to the forums. Packet Sender does not supply a callable DLL. As a workaround, you can perform a system call and capture the output. |
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Thank you for your confirmation. Packetsender is amazing apps. |
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Hi, Can you please help a way to make sure that a message being sent uses my virtual adapter (ethernet 6) just for the given destination IP. FYI, the ethernet adapter (ethernet 2) which is currently being used by the packet sender is my vpn adapter used to connect to my office server. |
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If the UDP packets aren't going out the NIC that you want, you can try to bind the IP address of Packet Sender to an IP owned by that NIC. Go to: File -> Settings -> Network. Look on the top right and type in the IP of the NIC. See screenshot:
Packet Sender will bind the main UDP socket to that IP. The packets should then flow out that NIC. |
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Hi Dan, Can you suggest if I can try anything else for debugging? FYI, I am using some python scripts using scapy to send out some Ethernet messages and communicate using virtual ethernet 6 adapter which is working fine. |
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Nothing is jumping out at me with the screen capture. The next level of network troubleshooting is to disable all other ethernet adapters except the one you want to test with. Disable all but the one you want and set Packet Sender back to general IPv4 bind. The packet has no choice but to go out that adapter. Give that a go. |
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Hi Dan, I appreciate your quick responses. Yeah if I do that then I can see it is going through the virtual ethernet 6 adapter which I was expecting. But I cannot proceed like that as I need the ethernet 2 adapter enabled to have the other tools in my use case working as they are running on server licenses. |
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You might have a soft IP conflict. This is a conflict where the IP is not directly conflicting, but they overlap subnets. What are the IP addresses and subnets of the 2 adapters? The one you want to use and the one it is currently sending out of? |
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The one I want to use has an IP address of 192.168.1.2 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. The one which is currently sending out the message has an IP address of 10.252.244.24 with a subnet mask of 255.255.192.0. All the time from packet sender,I am trying to send a message to an IP address of 192.168.1.12 |
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Maybe you need to clear your arp table. Perhaps something else responded as having 192.168.1.12. Launch admin-level powershell and run |
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Hi Dan, At this point, I think this behavior is may be because of how my VPN is setup to make it route everything through it. |
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Hi Dan |
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That has been requested before. It just has not been a priority. Add your comment here so that gets more visibility: #191 |
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Hi Dan, Is there a slim, cli only version available? We work with "resource-constrained" linux devices and was wondering if something like that is already available and useable |
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It's not much, but maybe it'd be enough, but you can compile from source a command-line only version of Packet Sender. You will still require the core Qt libraries, but you will at least avoid needing any GUI stuff. The Qt project file for CLI-only is here: It sets the project to console mode and removes all links to GUI widgets. |
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Hi dannagle, I am using packet sender for one of my project and we are going automate packet sender through CMD but unfortunately am getting the same response. |
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Were you trying to upload a screenshot? I can't see it. Will you try uploading again? |
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Sure |
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Hi dannagle, I hope to recieve quick response from you😊 my question is, Can I use this packet sender to generate fake traffic into my website???🙃 |
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Yes, it can, though it is fairly limited compared to more dedicated tools for that kind of task. You can do HTTP(S) calls and add a resend delay. Here is send a GET request to example.com every second...
Packet Sender supports creating custom GET and POST requests. You can keep clicking Send to stack the resend requests. Perhaps that is enough to accomplish your goal. |
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Hi Dan, |
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Hello eleliope, I'm glad you like Packet Sender. I will answer your question in the other thread. |
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Greetings Dan, |
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VLAN tagging happens at Layer 2. Packet Sender operates at Layer 3 and there is no plans to give it lower level access. One of the guiding design principles of Packet Sender is for all features to be available without admin permissions. This is what makes the purely portable version possible. Connecting a simple managed switch would likely have the feature you need and do not cost much. |
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Why is Packet Sender opening a new log window every time it receives a small group of packets? And why are these log windows white on white text/background? There are no settings for any of this |
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Uncheck "persistent TCP" on the main window.
The log window is white because there is a race condition with the coloring when the connection closes quickly. There is an open bug report on that. |
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Working on FHIR. I want to send FHIR XML String as inbound by TCP to a specific port number. How to send fhir (XML) string by TCP? |
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You can double-click the ASCII line editor to bring up multi-line and paste in your XML text directly. You can also load in the file using the "Load File" button. |
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Hey Dan, |
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There is not a direct echo feature. You can have it reply with macros. File->Settings->Network, then look bottom left.
That will reply back with the current time when connected to on TCP/UDP/SSL. Packet Sender supports several macros you can piece together to try to do what you need. Hope that helps. |
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Hi Dan, I'd like to use the Packet Sender CLI to run some automated tests/scripts. One of the requirements is to generate random packet sizes. Is this possible using the CLI? Thanks! |
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There is not one built-in, but it'd be pretty easy to do via scripting. Here is an example using Powershell. Save this to a file (like # Generate a random length for the hex string between 10 and 500
$hexLength = Get-Random -Minimum 10 -Maximum 501 # 501 to include 500 as max
# Define a valid hex character set
$hexChars = @('0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9','A','B','C','D','E','F')
# Generate a random hex string of the required length using ForEach-Object
$hexData = -join (1..$hexLength | ForEach-Object { Get-Random -InputObject $hexChars })
# Display the generated hex data
Write-Host "Generated Hex Data: $hexData"
# Path to Packet Sender executable
$packetSenderPath = "C:\Program Files\PacketSender\packetsender.com"
# Arguments for Packet Sender
$arguments = @(
"-txw", "500", # TCP, hex, wait 500 ms
"127.0.0.1", # Destination address
"49697", # Port
$hexData # Hex data argument
)
# Run Packet Sender with the generated hex data and additional arguments
Start-Process -FilePath $packetSenderPath -ArgumentList $arguments |
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I could use a little help understanding the Load File feature. Specifically, I cannot seem to create a text file that will load a packet in the format I want. The screenshot below shows saved packets I want to send (these work well). I have a separate application that will be generating larger packets (170 bytes) with data that varies. My goal is to use the Load File button to bring those packets into PacketSender. In no case will a saved txt file include more than one packet. The screenshot shows what happened after this sequence:
It seems that anything Load File brings in is interpreted literally as ASCII. Short of generating the txt files with non-readable control characters, is there any way to get Load File to read in as raw hex? I've googled a bit, and I've tried several things. Have not discovered the magic yet... 
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You have binary data in your packets. It is the HEX field that you want. That is the raw bytes that actually get sent out. The ASCII field in Packet Sender is actually a mixed ASCII notation using some short codes for non-printable characters, like There isn't an export binary function in Packet Sender. The intent was for the ASCII to help with that, but ASCII will not work (as you mentioned). Fortunately, getting that data into a file is simple in Linux or Mac terminal. WSL or Git Bash on Windows could do this too: # Copy your hex over here...
echo "48 65 6c 6c 6f" | xxd -r -p > mypacket.binThat will create mypacket.bin that represents your packet in a binary file that your other program can read in. If you don't have a Linux or Mac prompt, I am not skilled in Powershell, but I think this will work for it... # Copy your hex over here...
$hex = "48 65 6c 6c 6f"
# This will remove the space delineations
$cleanHex = $hex -replace '\s|-',''
$bytes = for($i=0; $i -lt $cleanHex.Length; $i+=2){
[Convert]::ToByte($cleanHex.Substring($i, 2), 16)
}
[System.IO.File]::WriteAllBytes("mypacket.bin", $bytes)
Hope that helps. |
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Thank you! |
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Hi, |
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Hello, there is no built-in way to do that. There isn't anything that is "wait X seconds and send additional data" mechanism. Sending starts a new connection (as you found). There is a "smart reply" mechanism that is close to what you are wanting, but that only triggers on incoming data. If the other side sends a response, you could trigger on that with a smart reply. That reuses the session. |
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Welcome to the new Packet Sender Forums!
This is my 3rd attempt at creating forums. My previous 2 attempts were overrun by spammers. GitHub now has a new "Discussions" feature, and it looks very promising. GitHub has been hosting my code and issues for the past 5 years, and I've been pleased. Lets give these Forums another go, shall we? 3rd time is the charm.
Feel free to:
My hope is this space will provide a good area for discussion while helping me keep the Issues tab focused on whatever work that is needed by the project.
So how are you using Packet Sender? Please introduce yourself.
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