Alternatives to Packet Sender
A utility for sending and receiving TCP, UDP, SSL and DTLS packets to test network services. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Packet Sender
A utility for sending and receiving TCP, UDP, SSL and DTLS packets to test network services.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Packet Sender.
netcat
The original TCP and UDP swiss army knife.
netcat is a tiny command-line TCP and UDP tool available on almost every Unix system, but without a GUI or encryption, and distributions ship incompatible rewrites.
socat
Multipurpose relay that connects almost any two data channels.
socat is a GPL command-line relay that connects almost any two channels including TLS and serial devices, with dense address syntax and no graphical interface.
hping3
Packet crafting tool for TCP/IP testing and probing.
hping3 crafts arbitrary TCP/IP packets from the command line for firewall testing, but it needs root, lacks a GUI and its development stopped years ago.
websocat
A command-line WebSocket client and server, like netcat or curl for ws:// with socat-style features.
websocat covers WebSocket connections specifically from the command line, working in pipes and scripts, rather than plain TCP, UDP, SSL and DTLS packets.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
MQTTX
A desktop, web and command-line MQTT client for testing brokers, topics and messages.
Wireshark
The network protocol analyser: capture traffic and read it packet by packet, with dissectors for hundreds of protocols.
Tcpreplay
A suite of command-line tools for editing captured network traffic and replaying it onto a network.
iPerf3
Measures how fast a network link really is between two machines you control, which a speed test cannot.
tcpdump
The classic command-line packet capture and analysis tool.
ngrep
A command-line packet capture tool that matches network payloads against regular or hexadecimal expressions.
