Skip to content

Investigate combining native and winpcap modes by combining them into one driver #332

Closed

Description

@fyodor

Right now Npcap "native" mode installs DLLs in the Windows\System32\Npcap directory so they don't conflict with an existing WinPcap install in Windows\System32 and it also uses a different driver (named 'npcap') so it doesn't conflict with an existing WinPcap driver (named 'npf'). If you specify Winpcap-compatible mode, Npcap also copies the wpcap.dll and packet.dll into System32 (where WinPcap puts them) and also runs a copy of the driver named npf.

All of this effort to avoid conflicting with WinPcap was more important back when it was a (purportedly) active project. But the last WinPcap release (4.1.3) was in 2013 and they officially abandoned the project in 2018. So enabling both Npcap and WinPcap to be installed and used at the same time on a system is arguably less important now as we approach 2020.

Therefor we might consider just consolidating to one driver (probably 'npcap', though 'npf' is an option) and putting the DLLs in both places so that software currently using either location continues to work. Then we could remove the 'Winpcap compatible' mode option because it would always work in both locations.

Activity

  1. fyodor commented on Nov 5, 2019

    @fyodor
    MemberAuthor

    We should probably still have an option which prevents DLL install in C:\Windows\System32\ just in case someone needs that.

  2. dmiller-nmap commented on Dec 4, 2019

    @dmiller-nmap
    Contributor

    Removing npf.sys done in 1453cab

    Still need to evaluate how the /winpcap_mode option will be handled.

  3. dmiller-nmap commented on Dec 14, 2019

    @dmiller-nmap
    Contributor

    This is done in Npcap 0.9985.

  4. transferred this issue fromnmap/nmapon May 5, 2021
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions