DNSCAP
dnscap is a network capture utility designed specifically for DNS traffic. It produces binary data in pcap(3) format. This utility is similar to tcpdump(1), but has a number of features tailored to DNS transactions and protocol options. OARC usesdnscap for DITL data collections. Some of its features include:
- Understands both IPv4 and IPv6
- Captures UDP, TCP, and IP fragments.
- Collect only queries, responses, or both (-s option)
- Collect for only certain source/destination addresses (-a -z -A -Z options)
- Periodically creates new pcap files (-t option)
- Spawns an upload script after closing a pcap file (-k option)
- Will start and stop collecting at specific times (-B -E options)
Distribution Packages
Packages for Debian, Ubuntu and RPM (CentOS, Fedora, RHEL, SLE and openSUSE) can be found here:https://dev.dns-oarc.net/packages/
You can also find it in the FreeBSD ports system (dns/dnscap).
Releases
The following releases of the DNSCAP software are available for download along with thechangelog.
| File | Date | Size |
|---|---|---|
| dnscap-2.5.1.tar.gz | January 26, 2026 | 854K |
| dnscap-2.5.0.tar.gz | October 21, 2025 | 853K |
| dnscap-2.4.1.tar.gz | June 26, 2025 | 817K |
| dnscap-2.4.0.tar.gz | June 23, 2025 | 814K |
| dnscap-2.3.1.tar.gz | April 24, 2025 | 770K |
| dnscap-2.3.0.tar.gz | April 17, 2025 | 769K |
| dnscap-2.2.1.tar.gz | September 10, 2024 | 748K |
| dnscap-2.2.0.tar.gz | August 23, 2023 | 748K |
| dnscap-2.1.3.tar.gz | June 27, 2023 | 722K |
| dnscap-2.1.2.tar.gz | June 15, 2023 | 719K |
| dnscap-2.1.1.tar.gz | February 3, 2023 | 718K |
| dnscap-2.1.0.tar.gz | September 9, 2022 | 718K |
| dnscap-2.0.3.tar.gz | June 13, 2022 | 717K |
| dnscap-2.0.2.tar.gz | March 8, 2022 | 717K |
| dnscap-2.0.1.tar.gz | March 11, 2021 | 716K |
| dnscap-2.0.0.tar.gz | February 12, 2021 | 716K |
| dnscap-1.12.0.tar.gz | October 22, 2020 | 691K |
| dnscap-1.11.1.tar.gz | August 20, 2020 | 656K |
| dnscap-1.11.0.tar.gz | June 1, 2020 | 652K |
| dnscap-1.10.4.tar.gz | March 2, 2020 | 641K |
| dnscap-1.10.3.tar.gz | October 2, 2019 | 641K |
| dnscap-1.10.2.tar.gz | August 5, 2019 | 641K |
| dnscap-1.10.1.tar.gz | July 8, 2019 | 641K |
| dnscap-1.10.0.tar.gz | December 3, 2018 | 647K |
| dnscap-1.9.0.tar.gz | February 28, 2018 | 522K |
| dnscap-1.8.0.tar.gz | February 7, 2018 | 522K |
| dnscap-1.7.1.tar.gz | December 27, 2017 | 483K |
| dnscap-1.7.0.tar.gz | December 19, 2017 | 476K |
| dnscap-1.6.0.tar.gz | December 1, 2017 | 458K |
| dnscap-1.5.1.tar.gz | August 21, 2017 | 458K |
| dnscap-1.5.0.tar.gz | June 06, 2017 | 434K |
| dnscap-1.4.1.tar.gz | March 29, 2017 | 422K |
| dnscap-1.4.0.tar.gz | February 27, 2017 | 417K |
| dnscap-1.3.0.tar.gz | December 23, 2016 | 397K |
| dnscap-1.2.0.tar.gz | October 27, 2016 | 386K |
| dnscap-1.1.0.tar.gz | October 11, 2016 | 375K |
| dnscap-20160205.tar.gz | February 5, 2016 | 103K |
Seesha256.txt orsha512.txt for checksums.
The DNSCAP software islicensed under theBSD license.
Documentation
SeeREADME.md for instructions how to install the software and the included manual pages on how to run the software.
Code Repositories
You can clone the code repositories from Codeberg:
$ git clone https://codeberg.org/DNS-OARC/dnscap.git
