Unsniff for Developers and Testers
 |
Developing
client
server applications
Developing protocol stacks
Testing complex networking systems
Creating automated network test scripts |
Advantage Unsniff
A network analyzer is used in development to check for
malformed packets,
incorrect sequence of PDUs, excessive retransmissions, and a host of
other problems. Unsniff rises
above all the rest due to its
visualization, extensibility, and automation capabilities.
Some of the things you can do with Unsniff are:
- Write
secure, self documenting, flexible decoders for your
custom protocol
- Leverage the power of XML to describe your protocol
- Create advanced plugins with application level intelligence
- Write test scripts
to analyze complex capture data
- Print protocol descriptions and attach to format
specifications
- Much more such as PDU and full stream analysis, read more..
How can Unsniff help :
System
Engineers
Software/Hardware
developers
Verification/Test
Engineers
System Engineers
A system engineer is responsible for specifying the various components
of the application and their interfaces. The interaction between
components can be (1) a standard protocol - such as DNS, LDAP, RSVP or
(2) a custom or proprietary protocol. The systems engineer can use
Unsniff to document and even design these protocols. The features of
Unsniff most useful to systems engineers are:
- Visualization:
When
you are designing a protocol, you
typically use a byte frame to specify the protocol fields. You can see
this is action is many of the IETF RFCs and other standards
documents. Unsniff uses the same visualization
technique for displaying protocol fields. You do not have to rely on
raw hex dumps or tree views to visualize your data.
- Printing:
Unsniff supports advanced multi-page printing and
print-preview. You can use these rich printouts in reviews and design
meetings.
- Documentation
: After designing your protocol or messages,
you can
document each field using XML. This field-level documentation is
definitive and can be used by your developers and testers. This is a
huge plus because Unsniff can be uniformly
used across your organization. This prevents finger pointing and
incorrect intepretation of protocol definitions. There is no
other network
or protocol analyzer that allows you to do this.
Software/Hardware
developers
Developers have the unenviable task of actually implementing the
components that comprise the network application. They also
have to implement the protocols that are used to pull the whole system
together. Whether you are using third party protocol stacks or
implementing your own - Unsniff will make you more productive.
- Visualization:
A developer often has to go through a
large number of iterations before he/she is able to get it right.
Today, this means looking at hex dumps and/or a tree views of your
data. Unsniff's revolutionary new packet displays eliminate the pain of
analyzing packet data.
- PDU Analysis:
Prior to Unsniff, if you were
developing a protocol on top of a stream layer such as TCP, then you
were out of luck. All existing protocol analyzers only show you
link-layer frames (ethernet, token ring, 802.11,etc). However, PDU
based protocol do not care about link layer frames at all. Unsniff is
the first and only network analyzer that features PDU analysis. No
matter what the size, PDUs are analyzed just like link layer
packets.
- Full Stream
Analysis: If you are implementing a protocol
such as HTTP, BGP or LDAP, you will find that full-stream analysis will
dramatically improve your visibility. In full stream analysis, entire
TCP sessions are monitored in real time. You can observe all streams of
data in your network, zoom in on an interesting stream, and then do
interesting things like open a ladder diagram, save payloads, export
stream, run custom scripts, etc. This type of top-down analysis is only
possible with Unsniff.
- Bookmark,
Annotate: These allow you to tag
interesting packets in your capture file. You can share a capture file
with annotated and bookmarked packets with your team members.
- Extensibility:
As a developer you can extend Unsniff
using the Unsniff Developers API. You can create custom protocol
handlers in C++ or XML, name resolvers, eavesdroppers. You
can even design entire applications on top of Unsniff using the API.
The possibilities are endless. A small investment in developing a
plugin can make Unsniff fit your needs exactly.
Testers
Testing teams ensure that the application behaves as expected under a
variety of conditions. Testing & Verification is one area where
Unsniff can prove to be major time and effort saver. This is
possible due to the extensibility and scripting capabilities of
Unsniff. You can capture data from various points in the network and
execute test scripts using the Unsniff Scripting API. You can test for
malformed packets, timing errors, sequence errors, incorrect
request/response pairs, throughput, and much more.
- Scripting:
You can write test scripts that work on
captured data. These scripts can check various error conditions
including malformed packets, out of sequence data, throughput, etc.
You can execute these scripts as part of your regression
testing process. This kind of scripting is enabled by the Unsniff
Scripting API. The functionality of these scripts is only limited by
your imagination.
- Reporting:
If you find an error, you can annotate bad
packet(s) and attach the capture file to your bug report. Alternately,
Unsniff allows you to generate excellent printouts - which you can then
take directly to the development team.
- Self
Documenting: Unsniff can provide extensive
field-level help for all protocols. Whether you are developing a custom
protocol or implementing a standard protocol - you will never be lost
in the test lab looking at an unknown packet. Futhermore, these fields
can the documented by the designers of the protocol - so you have
access to unambigous information.
For more information about how Unsniff Network Analyzer can help with
your particular usage scenario, contact us at 
|
|
|