PCAP Capture File Format

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

In the late 1980's, Van Jacobson, Steve McCanne, and others at the Network Research Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed the tcpdump program to capture and dissect network traces. The code to capture traffic, using low-level mechanisms in various operating systems, and to read and write network traces to a file was later put into a library named libpcap.¶

This document describes the format used by tcpdump, and other programs using libpcap, to read and write network traces.¶

2. Terminology

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶

3. General File Structure

A capture file begins with a File Header, followed by zero or more Packet Records, one per packet.¶

All fields in the File Header and in Packet Records will always be saved according to the characteristics (little endian / big endian) of the capturing machine. This refers to all the fields that are saved as numbers and that span over two or more octets.¶

The approach of having the file saved in the native format of the generating host is more efficient because it avoids translation of data when reading / writing on the host itself, which is the most common case when generating/processing capture captures.¶

The packets are shown in traditional IETF diagram, with the bits numbered from the left to the right. The bit numbering does not reflect the binary value position, as IETF protocols are traditionally in big-endian network-byte order. The most significant bit is therefore on the left in this diagram as if the file is being stored on a big-endian system.¶

4. File Header

The File Header has the following format:¶

                           1                   2                   3
       0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
    0 |                          Magic Number                         |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
    4 |          Major Version        |         Minor Version         |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
    8 |                           Reserved1                           |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   12 |                           Reserved2                           |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   16 |                            SnapLen                            |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   20 | FCS |f|0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0|         LinkType              |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

The File Header length is 24 octets.¶

The meaning of the fields in the File Header is:¶

Magic Number (32 bits):

an unsigned magic number, whose value is either the hexadecimal number 0xA1B2C3D4 or the hexadecimal number 0xA1B23C4D.¶

If the value is 0xA1B2C3D4, time stamps in Packet Records (see Figure 2) are in seconds and microseconds; if it is 0xA1B23C4D, time stamps in Packet Records are in seconds and nanoseconds.¶

These numbers can be used to distinguish sections that have been saved on little-endian machines from the ones saved on big-endian machines, and to heuristically identify pcap files.¶

Major Version (16 bits):

an unsigned value, giving the number of the current major version of the format. The value for the current version of the format is 2. This value should change if the format changes in such a way that code that reads the new format could not read the old format (i.e., code to read both formats would have to check the version number and use different code paths for the two formats) and code that reads the old format could not read the new format.¶

Minor Version (16 bits):

an unsigned value, giving the number of the current minor version of the format. The value is for the current version of the format is 4. This value should change if the format changes in such a way that code that reads the new format could read the old format without checking the version number but code that reads the old format could not read all files in the new format.¶

Reserved1 (32 bits):

not used - SHOULD be filled with 0 by pcap file writers, and MUST be ignored by pcap file readers. This value was documented by some older implementations as "gmt to local correction". Some older pcap file writers stored non-zero values in this field.¶

Reserved2 (32 bits):

not used - SHOULD be filled with 0 by pcap file writers, and MUST be ignored by pcap file readers. This value was documented by some older implementations as "accuracy of timestamps". Some older pcap file writers stored non-zero values in this field.¶

SnapLen (32 bits):

an unsigned value indicating the maximum number of octets captured from each packet. The portion of each packet that exceeds this value will not be stored in the file. This value MUST NOT be zero; if no limit was specified, the value should be a number greater than or equal to the largest packet length in the file.¶

LinkType (16 bits):

a 16-bit unsigned value that defines the link layer type of packets in the file. This field is defined in the Section 8.1 IANA registry.¶

Frame Cyclic Sequence (FCS) present (4 bits):

if the "f" bit is set, then the 3 FCS bits provide the number of 16-bit (2 byte) words of FCS that are appended to each packet.¶

valid values are between 0 and 7, with ethernet typically having a length of 4 bytes, or a value of 2.¶

The bits marked as zero MUST be set to zero by pcap writers, and MUST be ignored by pcap readers.¶

5. Packet Record

A Packet Record is the standard container for storing the packets coming from the network.¶

                          1                   2                   3
      0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
    0 |                      Timestamp (Seconds)                      |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
    4 |            Timestamp (Microseconds or nanoseconds)            |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
    8 |                    Captured Packet Length                     |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   12 |                    Original Packet Length                     |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   16 /                                                               /
      /                          Packet Data                          /
      /                        variable length                        /
      /                                                               /
      +---------------------------------------------------------------+

The Packet Header length is 16 octets.¶

The meaning of the fields in the Packet Record is:¶

Timestamp (Seconds) and Timestamp (Microseconds or nanoseconds):

seconds and fraction of a seconds values of a timestamp.¶

The seconds value is a 32-bit unsigned integer that represents the number of seconds that have elapsed since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, and the microseconds or nanoseconds value represents the number of microseconds or nanoseconds that have elapsed since that seconds.¶

Whether the value represents microseconds or nanoseconds is specified by the magic number in the File Header.¶

Captured Packet Length (32 bits):

an unsigned value that indicates the number of octets captured from the packet (i.e. the length of the Packet Data field). It will be the minimum value among the Original Packet Length and the snapshot length for the interface (SnapLen, defined in Figure 1).¶

Original Packet Length (32 bits):

an unsigned value that indicates the actual length of the packet when it was transmitted on the network. It can be different from the Captured Packet Length if the packet has been truncated by the capture process.¶

Packet Data:

the data coming from the network, including link-layer headers. The actual length of this field is Captured Packet Length. The format of the link-layer headers depends on the LinkType field specified in the file header (see Figure 1) and it is specified in the entry for that format in [LINKTYPES].¶

6. Recommended File Name Extension: .pcap

The recommended file name extension for the "PCAP Capture File Format" specified in this document is ".pcap".¶

On Windows and macOS, files are distinguished by an extension to their filename. Such an extension is technically not actually required, as applications should be able to automatically detect the pcap file format through the "magic bytes" at the beginning of the file, as some other UN*X desktop environments do. However, using name extensions makes it easier to work with files (e.g. visually distinguish file formats) so it is recommended - though not required - to use .pcap as the name extension for files following this specification.¶

Please note: To avoid confusion (such as the current usage of .cap for a plethora of different capture file formats) file name extensions other than .pcap should be avoided.¶

There is new work to create the PCAP Next Generation capture File Format (see [I-D.tuexen-opsawg-pcapng]). The new file format is not compatible with this specification, but many programs read both transparently. Files of that type will usually start with a Section Header Block, with a magic number of 0x0A0D0D0A.¶

7. Security Considerations

TBD.¶

8. IANA Considerations

This document requires the following IANA actions:¶

9. Contributors

[Insert pcap developers etc. here].¶

10. Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank [insert list here] and many others for their invaluable comments.¶

Authors' Addresses