Unsniff for Developers and Testers | Developing client server applications
Developing protocol stacks
Testing complex networking systems
Creating automated network test scripts |
Advantage UnsniffA 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..
System EngineersA 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 developersDevelopers 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.
TestersTesting 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 
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