Ostinato For Linux

Ostinato is an open-source and cross-platform software project designed from the ground up as a capable network packet and traffic generator/analyzer tool for system administrators and security enthusiasts.

Key features include support for various standard protocols, support for Ethernet, 802.3, LLC SNAP, support for VLAN (with Q-in-Q), support for the IPv4, IPv6, ARP, IP-in-IP a.k.a IP Tunnelling (4over4, 4over6, 6over4 and 6over6), UDP, TCP, ICMPv4 and ICMPv6 protocols, as well as any other text-based protocol like HTTP, NNTP, RTSP, SIP, etc.

The application allows users to easily modify any field of any protocol, stack protocols in any random order, create their own scripts in order to add support for other protocol that are not currently supported, as well as to create and configure multiple streams or configure stream bursts, rates and number of packets.

It is also includes the ability to capture network packets and analyze them with the Wireshark application, as well as to control and configure multiple ports on as many computers as you want.

The application has been designed from the ground up with cross-platform in mind. It is coded in the C++ programming language and its graphical user interface is designed with the help of the platform independent Qt GUI toolkit, which means that it supports GNU/Linux, BSD, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

It supports a wide range of Linux distributions, among which we can mention Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, openSUSE and SUSE Enterprise Linux, providing uses with binary packages for both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware platforms. A source archive is also available for download.

All things considered, Ostinato aims to be "Wireshark in Reverse" and thus it is now heavily used as a companion to the world’s most popular free network scanner, Wireshark. It is a very useful application for performance testing.