Npcap 2020

[Daniel Miller <bonsaiviking () gmail com>]

Hello, friends!

2019 has been a banner year for Npcap. With the release of Wireshark 3.0 in
February 2019 including Npcap in its installer, Npcap has reached
unprecedented numbers of users. We have also had lots of interest from
companies looking to distribute Npcap OEM as a solid, modern upgrade to
WinPcap within their products. The increased attention has brought many
improvements and ironed out lots of rough spots. It has been exciting to
see how much progress has been made and what exciting prospects remain in
store for the premier packet capture library for Windows. Here's a quick
breakdown of some of the exciting things that have happened with Npcap this
year:

14 new releases, from Npcap 0.99-r9 to Npcap 0.9986. The installer has
shrunk by 24KB, and the space and time required for installation have
dropped as well.

10 crash fixes, but no crashes reported in the last 3 releases.

Upgraded to libpcap 1.9.1, with all the latest performance and security
improvements.

32 signed files bundled in the installer. Npcap is completely code-signed
with the Insecure.org, LLC EV code signing certificate, making it safe to
use in application whitelisting environments.

We also said goodbye to a few odd quirks that we're happy to be rid of:
* No more npf.sys! Whether you install in WinPcap API-compatible mode or
not, only one filter driver is required.
* No more Npcap Loopback Adapter! Loopback capture is now done without the
need to install a virtual loopback adapter, which solves a lot of routing
and connectivity problems. Nmap 7.80 and older still need it to figure out
routing, but the next Nmap release won't.
* No more restarting the driver! When you add or remove a plug-and-play
adapter, Npcap will automatically detect it. This was a much-requested
feature.

We are very excited for what the future holds for Npcap. Our focus is
primarily increased stability and performance, not adding new features, but
we're particularly excited about a few changes we have planned:
* Replacing the current Admin-only mode with a new fully-configurable
access control scheme that will allow granting read (capture) and write
(injection) capabilities to individual users, groups, and domain groups.
* Upgrading to NDIS 6.20, dropping support for Windows Vista and Server
2008. Updating NDIS version improves performance and minimizes Npcap's
impact on high-performance systems that ordinarily take advantage of new
NDIS features.

Thanks for all your support and interest in Npcap and Nmap. We're looking
forward to a great year!

Dan

Npcap: https://npcap.org/
Npcap OEM: https://npcap.org/oem/

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