Version 4.1
06/11/2009

Welcome to the AirPcap Developers Resources!

Welcome to CACE Technologies AirPcap development system. Here you will find everything you need to use an AirPcap adapter in your application to receive 802.11 packets: Include and lib files, API documentation, a ready to compile set of example programs. Below, we depict the relationship among the various software components that enable your application to use an AirPcap adapter.

The hardware level consists of the CACE Technologies AirPcap adapter. CACE Technologies provides a driver (Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 32-bit or 64-bit) that supports one or more AirPcap adapters.

airpcap.dll interfaces directly with the driver and exports a low-level API that can be used to directly communicate with the adapter. This API exposes the adapter's configuration setting that cannot be changed with higher-level APIs: radio channel, WEP keys configuration, and so on. AirPcap.dll can be used to receive the captured packets too, but this is not suggested because its receive functionalities are much more complex to use.

To start using the AirPcap API, go to the AirPcap Developer's Pack documentation.

WinPcap provides a higher-level, portable, Open Source API used by many popular network tools, including Wireshark, Snort, WinDump, ntop and many others. WinPcap interfaces with airpcap.dll, but exports a wider set of functions that make it easier to receive network traffic, create and apply packet filters, handle different link layers, and manage trace files. The WinPcap developer's pack is located in the WinPcap_Devpack folder. This folder contains the WinPcap manual and tutorial too.

Both the AirPcap and the WinPcap developer's packs contain sets of sample programs that can be compiled with either Visual Studio or GCC under the Cygwin environment.