This document describes the bittwist program, the pcap(3) based Ethernet packet generator. Bittwist is designed to work under Ethernet II (IEEE 802.3) network with a MTU of up to 1500 bytes on 10Mbps (10Base-T Ethernet) or 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) link speed. Packets are generated from saved tcpdump(1) capture file referred to as trace file in this document. Some familiarity with tcpdump(1) and its basic options are assumed in this document. Since bittwist uses functions provided by pcap(3) library, e.g. pcap_open_live() and pcap_inject(), to write packets onto the network, it may require that you have special privileges, e.g. read access to /dev/bpf* on BSD or root access on Linux, to generate packets or to enumerate network devices with, for example, the -d flag.
Bittwist will, if not run with the -s flag, inject each packet up to its actual length (on-wire) instead of its captured length. If the captured length is less than the actual length, bittwist will pad the packet with zeros up to its actual length prior to injection. Bittwist will, if not run with the -m, -r, or -p flag, inject packets from a trace file based on the captured intervals, in particular, the timestamp difference between two adjacent packets, except for the first packet in a trace file, which is always injected immediately. Bittwist is designed to not to interfere with the packet data; it merely read a packet and inject it as is onto the network. If modification is desired prior to injection of a packet, you can use the bittwiste(1) program, which does just that.
Print a list of network interfaces available.
Print timestamp for each packet.
Print timestamp and hex data for each packet.
Send pcap-file(s) out onto the network through interface.
Packet length to send. Set length to:
0 to send the actual packet length. This is the default.
-1 to send the captured length.
or any other value from 14 to 1514.
Send pcap-file(s) out onto the network for loop times. Set loop to 0 to send pcap-file(s) until stopped. To stop, type Control-C.
Send up to count packets. Default is to send all packets from pcap-file(s).
Set interval multiplier to speed. Set speed to 0 or less to send the next packet immediately. Minimum positive value for speed is 0.000001.
Limit the sending to rate Mbps. Value for rate must be between 1 to 1000. This option is meant to limit the maximum packet throughput.
If you want to send packets at line rate of 100Mbps, try -m 0 -r 100
Set interval to sleep (in seconds), ignoring the actual interval. Value for sleep must be between 1 to 2146.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.