Wireshark-dev: [Wireshark-dev] Re: Airpcap an winpcap

From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2024 10:21:09 -0700
On Oct 13, 2024, at 3:24 AM, Anders Broman <a.broman58@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Is it time to drop code related to Airpcap and winpcap?

Airpcap: that's mainly an issue for Npcap.  WinPcap had its own code in packet.dll to handle AirPcap/TurboCapDAG cards, and that was copied over to Npcap.  It predates the module code I added to libpcap, so, at the time, there was no way to do that sort of thing within the libpcap code.  I added the TurboCap and AirPcap support, looking at what the WinPcap/Npcap code did, so that the Npcap people could drop their code if they chose.

Ultimately, that's an Npcap issue.

WinPcap: the only code we have related to WinPcap is the code that handles the presence or absence of PacketIsLoopbackAdapter() in packet.dll; I *think* that was always present in Npcap's packet.dll, but, if not, that's "WinPcap and older Npcap support" rather than "WinPcap support". We could drop it, just as we dropped support for older Linux kernels; I don't know how many people want WinPcap's driver and corresponding packet.dll, but want a more modern libpcap, and are building libpcap as a replacement wpcap.dll, but it may be that dropping that support wouldn't be an issue.