NetworkInspector.CLI 0.2.0

NetworkInspector.CLI

Command-line interface for the Network Inspector stack. Provides frame-level conversion between capture formats and packet-level export to analysis formats.

The executable is published as ni.

Commands

Run ni <command> --help for the full set of options for a given command.

ni convert

Frame-level format conversion. No protocol parsing is performed. Suitable for splitting, re-compressing, or converting large captures.

ni convert <input> [<input2> ...] --output <path> [options]

Common options:
  --output, -o            Output path (file or directory if --split-* is set)
  --output-format, -f     Output format spec (see ni convert --help; overrides extension)
  --split-size <MB>       Split output at this size in MiB
  --split-count <N>       Split output every N frames
  --blf-cache-size <MB>   Container cache budget for BLF sources (MiB)
  --progress <N>          Report progress every N frames
  --tolerant              Skip malformed frames instead of aborting

Examples

# Convert a BLF capture to PCAPNG
ni convert capture.blf --output capture.pcapng

# Split a large PCAPNG into 100 MiB chunks
ni convert big.pcapng --output split/ --split-size 100

# Convert multiple BLF files into a single PCAPNG
ni convert a.blf b.blf --output merged.pcapng

ni export

Parses each frame through the full protocol stack and writes one record per packet to the configured exporter. Supports optional profile-based settings for protocol configuration.

ni export <input> [<input2> ...] --format <fmt> --output <path> [options]

Common options:
  --format <fmt>          Output format: json | pbf | text
  --output, -o            Output path (omit or use - for stdout)
  --profile <name>        Settings profile name
  --settings-path <dir>   Base directory for settings storage
  --blf-cache-size <MB>   Container cache budget for BLF sources (MiB)
  --progress <N>          Report progress every N packets
  --tolerant              Skip malformed frames instead of aborting

Format variants:

Examples

# Compact JSON to stdout
ni export capture.pcapng --format json

# Pretty-printed JSON to file
ni export capture.pcapng --format json:style=pretty --output capture.json

# Human-readable Wireshark-style text dump
ni export capture.pcapng --format text --output capture.txt

# Columnar PBF with LZ4 compression
ni export capture.pcapng --format pbf:format=columnar,compressed --output capture.pbf

Exit Codes

Notes

• Console output is forced to UTF-8 (Console.OutputEncoding = Encoding.UTF8).
• Cancellation (Ctrl+C) is observed cooperatively by every long-running command and propagated to the underlying source / exporter.
• Standard input / output streaming is supported by passing - as the path for sources and exporters that accept streams.

See the repository README.md for an overview of the wider Network Inspector project and the supported formats.