Thread: How to Access Ethernet Card From C++

I'm trying to write a customized packet sniffer. I don't want to use ethereal or something similar because it's far too advanced for the purposes I want to use it for, not to mention I want to customize my packet sniffer's behavior anyway.

I have done SO many searches on the internet, I have asked so many of my Counterstrike buddies who program, and I am simply completely lost. I have no idea where to even start. All I know is that I need to be able to access my NIC (in my case, ethernet card) from C++, so that I can monitor the packets coming into it, and going out of it.

I know that this is a very broad question, and I debated whether or not to post, but I simply am out of ideas. I can't find help anywhere else. Does anyone know where a good place to start is, as far as learning how to program my NIC? Please, any help at all is going to help me.

cheers,
drmario

I beleive you need to write a NDIS driver but since I have never done this I don't know the specifics on doing that but it might be a usefull searc term. You could also look at the libpcap library. It provides all the functions needed to write a packet sniffer and is open source.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will do a search on NDIS. As far as the libpcap library goes, I downloaded the source for that. In browsing the source, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the size and complexity of that library. In addition, nowhere in the items included in the download did I find simple documentation on all the functionality provided by the library, or instructions on how to build it using VC++ :-(

But definite thanks for the NDIS suggestions, will get back to searching the jungle/internet on NDIS thx :-)

cheers,
DrMario

As I previously stated when I downloaded the libpcap library I was simply overwhelmed. So much code... I consider myself an intermediate, at best, programmer and a newbie is probably more accurate. Digging through and looking at the code containd in the header & source files only served to confuse me, and get me angry because I can't successfully break it down and follow it. I can't find a list of the functionality it provides (in the download can't find a list of the functionality) and I can't find an explanation of how to build the library with VC++. Maybe I'm in over my head with this project :-( But thanks for the help, I appreciate it sir :-)

cheers,
DrMario