Capturing traffic and processing its contents is a valuable skill that when put in the right hands makes diagnosing and troubleshooting network issues an approachable task. Apart from aiding in fixing common problems, packet capture can also be used for any application that requires getting a deeper understanding of how things work under the hood. Many tools have been developed in order to allow the user to study the flow of data inside of a network. This paper focuses on documenting the process of creating such tools and showcasing their use in different contexts. This is achieved by leveraging the power of the C++ programming language and of the libtins library in order to create custom extensible sniffing tools, which are then used in VoIP (Voice over IP) and IDS (Intrusion Detection System) applications.
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