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This is a neat gui tool which you can use to view actual packet data, structure, and more. This can help you learn the underlying fundementals behind networking and traffic transmission over different protocols in a visual and engaging way.

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Magic-Man-us/NexusPacketInspector

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Nexus Inspector

A high-performance network packet analyzer built with Tauri v2, React, D3.js, and Rust. Analyze PCAP files with real-time visualizations across 12 interactive views — or explore the demo mode with simulated network traffic.

Live Demo (demo mode — no install required)


Features

  • PCAP Analysis — Load .pcap / .pcapng files with zero-copy parsing via memmap2 + etherparse
  • 12 Visualization Views — Each tailored for a different analytical perspective
  • Stream Reconstruction — Reassembled TCP streams with protocol-aware rendering (HTTP, DNS, SMTP, FTP, MQTT, and more)
  • Cross-Highlighting — Hover a field in Structure view and the corresponding bytes light up in the Hex Viewer
  • Rust-Powered Filtering — Wireshark-like syntax (tcp, ip.src == 10.0.0.1, port 443)
  • Parallel Parsing — Rayon-based multi-threaded packet dissection
  • Plugin System — Extensible adapter architecture (Nmap included)
  • Demo Mode — Generates realistic synthetic traffic across 20 protocols with conversation-aware payloads
  • Configurable Themes — Three color schemes (Nexus, Dark, Light) with optional grid overlays

Views

Dashboard

Home screen with a card grid linking to every view. Hover a card to see a description; click to navigate.

Packets

Virtual-scrolled packet table with sortable columns (time, protocol, source, destination, size). Click any row to inspect it in the sidebar hex viewer.

Structure

Layer-by-layer protocol dissection — Ethernet, IP, TCP/UDP, and Payload. Hover any field to open the Field Encyclopedia popover with descriptions, bit lengths, and hex offsets. Hovering also cross-highlights the corresponding bytes in the sidebar Hex Viewer.

Livewire

Real-time stream reconstruction. Select a TCP/UDP stream and view reassembled content in three modes:

Mode Description
Parsed Protocol-aware rendering — HTTP request/response headers, SMTP envelopes, DNS query/answer records, MQTT topics, FTP commands
Raw Plain text reconstruction of payload
Hex Hex dump of reassembled stream bytes

Encrypted streams (HTTPS, SSH, TLS) are detected and clearly labeled. Toggle direction (client, server, or both).

Route Trace

Visualize packet paths with three sub-views:

  • Graph — Force-directed D3 topology with draggable nodes, zoom/pan, and directional arrows
  • Structured — Hierarchical layout showing source → hops → destination
  • List — Tabular hop-by-hop breakdown with RTT

Matrix

Dense IP-to-IP conversation grid. Rows = sources, columns = destinations. Cell color intensity maps to traffic volume. Toggle between packet count and byte volume. Shows top 15 talkers.

Sankey

Interactive flow diagram with four grouping modes:

Mode Left Column Right Column
Protocol → Port Protocol Destination port
IP → Service Source IP Service name
Subnet → Protocol /16 subnet Protocol
IP → IP Source IP Destination IP

Hover any flow for a tooltip with source, target, and volume. Top 20 flows by bytes displayed.

Sequence

UML-style message exchange timeline. Select a stream from the left panel to see chronological packet flow with arrows, TCP flags, timestamps, and sequence/ACK numbers. Animated pulse particles flow along each arrow.

Topology

Hierarchical network tree: Network → Local/Remote → Subnets (/24) → Hosts. Color-coded by level. Shows top 5 local and 5 remote subnets.

Services

Grid of service cards (top 12 by volume). Each card shows the service name, port, packet count, byte volume, number of source IPs, and protocol tags. Known ports are auto-mapped (80 → HTTP, 443 → HTTPS, 22 → SSH, etc.).

Stats

Deep analytics dashboard with 10+ widgets: protocol donut chart, packet size histogram, packets/second timeline, top talkers, port distribution, TCP flag breakdown, anomaly detection (RST floods, oversized packets, unusual ports), conversation rankings, TTL distribution, and summary statistics.

Plugins

Manage external tool integrations. Ships with an Nmap plugin:

  • Profiles: Quick, Aggressive, Comprehensive, Custom
  • Live Progress: Real-time scan output
  • Enrichment: Discovered hosts, open ports, and OS guesses are injected back into packet data

Sidebar

The sidebar is a persistent inspector panel with two tabs:

  • Packets — Last 100 captured packets (click to select)
  • Hex Dump — Full binary view of the selected packet, color-coded by protocol layer (Ethernet, IP, TCP/UDP, Payload), with ASCII decode

Additional controls:

  • Split View — Show both tabs simultaneously
  • Detach — Pop the sidebar into a draggable floating window (snaps to screen corners)
  • Collapse — Minimize to a thin edge strip; hover to temporarily expand
  • Prev / Next / Latest — Navigate between packets

Filter Syntax

Type filters into the search bar in the header. Supported patterns:

tcp                          # Protocol match (case-insensitive)
udp
dns

ip.src == 192.168.1.100     # Source IP
ip.dst == 8.8.8.8           # Destination IP
ip.addr == 10.0.0.5         # Either source or destination

port 443                     # Source or destination port
src port 22                  # Source port only
dst port 3306                # Destination port only

192.168.1                    # Substring search (fallback) —
                             # matches protocol, IPs, or info fields

Settings

Click FX in the header to open the settings panel.

Setting Options
Color Scheme Nexus (green), Dark (blue), Light (light blue)
Matrix Grid On / Off toggle
Grid Opacity 1% – 10% slider (when grid is on)

Demo Mode

The app starts in demo mode by default. Click DEMO to begin generating synthetic traffic.

Demo mode simulates realistic network conversations across 20 protocols (HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, SSH, FTP, SMTP, DHCP, MQTT, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and more). Packets include:

  • Bidirectional stream tracking with conversation-aware payloads
  • Proper TCP flags (SYN/ACK/FIN/RST distribution)
  • Realistic IP headers (TTL, DSCP, identification, fragmentation flags)
  • Simulated traceroute paths (3–8 hops with increasing RTT)
  • Protocol-specific message sequences (e.g., SMTP EHLOMAILRCPTDATA)

Click OPEN PCAP to load a real capture file instead, or visit the live demo to try it in the browser.


Tech Stack

Layer Technology
App Shell Tauri v2
Frontend React 18 + TypeScript + Vite
State Zustand
Visualizations D3.js
Virtual Scrolling @tanstack/react-virtual
PCAP Parsing pcap-parser + etherparse (zero-copy)
Large Files memmap2 (memory-mapped I/O)
Parallelism Rayon
Plugin IPC Tokio + serde_json

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Development

# Install frontend dependencies
npm install

# Run in development mode (starts both Vite + Rust)
npm run tauri dev

Build

# Production build
npm run tauri build

The distributable binary will be in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

Web-Only (No Rust)

# Run the frontend in demo mode without the Tauri backend
npm run dev

Project Structure

src/                    # React frontend
  components/
    layout/             # Header, NavTabs, StatusBar, SettingsPanel
    views/              # 12 visualization views
    shared/             # Reusable components (HexViewer, Sidebar, EmptyState, NexusLogo)
  hooks/                # Zustand stores, Tauri event hooks
  lib/                  # Tauri bridge, demo mode, formatters, field byte offsets
  styles/               # Theme, global styles, component styles
  types/                # TypeScript interfaces

src-tauri/src/          # Rust backend
  commands/             # Tauri commands (file, filter, plugin)
  parser/               # PCAP reading, packet dissection, stream tracking
  analysis/             # Statistics, conversations
  plugins/              # Plugin system + NMAP adapter

License

GPL3

Author

magicman — mimsec.com

About

This is a neat gui tool which you can use to view actual packet data, structure, and more. This can help you learn the underlying fundementals behind networking and traffic transmission over different protocols in a visual and engaging way.

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