Re: Favoring Npcap over WinPcap at runtime?

[Graham Bloice <graham.bloice () trihedral com>]

On 18 October 2017 at 09:45, Pascal Quantin <pascal.quantin () gmail com>
wrote:

> Hi list,
>
> when we introduced Npcap support back in 2015/2016, we decided that
> WinPcap driver should have higher precedence due to its known stability
> (and despite issues with newer Windows versions).  By that time, you could
> get a BSoD with Npcap.
>
> Time has elapsed since, and Npcap is now bundled with Nmap. The number of
> commits in Npcap repository (https://github.com/nmap/npcap/) have also
> decreased, which hopefully means that the product is more mature (the list
> of opened issues can be found here: https://github.com/nmap/nmap/
> issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3ANpcap).
>
> Nmap team filled bug 14134 regarding a library loading issue they spotted.
> We are gonna fix it, but it raises the question of which capture driver
> (between WinPcap and Npcap) should be attempted to be loaded first.
> Note that for now I do not want to change the driver bundled with our
> Windows installers (the Npcap license restriction must be solved before
> even thinking about it). So this only concerns people having installed both
> WinPcap and Npap. Moreover, if we agree on the change, I would suggest to
> apply it only in development branch.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Regards,
> Pascal.
I'm generally in agreement with all the above, but I'm torn on hard-coding
a preference for one capture library over another.  If a system has both,
who are we to say which one will be used to the exclusion of the other.

I guess I'm implying we should expose a preference to allow the user to
choose which is definitely more work but does give control back.


-- 
Graham Bloice

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