Opening PCAP Files

The PCAP file type is primarily associated with Wireshark.

PCAP	File extension: PCAP
	File type:	network packet data file

What is a PCAP file

PCAP files mostly belong to Wireshark by The Wireshark team. PCAP files store network data gathered by the network-traffic-capturing program tcpdump. They are used to analyze networks, monitor bandwidth usage, identify rogue DHCP servers, detect malware, cyberattacks, DNS resolution, incident response, and troubleshoot general performance issues. An extensible successor format to PCAP has been made - PCAPNG.

• Usage: PCAP files are created by the API, and read using supported analysis tools. The file contains a record of network data that is viewable through these tools. The most popular of which is Wireshark, but there are many available, both cloud-based and client-based, and both free and open-source.
• Compatibility: pcap is implemented on an operating system through different libraries: on Unix-like systems it's in the libcap library, while on Windows it's Npcap. It's important to note that for Windows versions earlier than 7, you have to use the deprecated WinPcap library.
• Related extensions: pcap uses two more extensions other than PCAP: CAP and DMP.

How to open a PCAP file

You need a suitable software like Wireshark to open a PCAP file. Without proper software you will receive a Windows message "How do you want to open this file?" or "Windows cannot open this file" or a similar Mac/iPhone/Android alert. If you cannot open your PCAP file correctly, try to right-click or long-press the file. Then click "Open with" and choose an application. You can also display a PCAP file directly in the browser:. Just drag the file onto this browser window and drop it.

Online PCAP Text Viewer

Choose your .pcap file to analyze

or drag and drop it here

Online File Viewer

✈

Read our privacy guarantee in Filext’s terms and privacy policy

Please allow ads on our site

This helps us keep our servers running. Then re-upload your file to view it.

Click here to see how to disable the ad blocker for filext.com

PCAP file extension format:

The file format determines how the data is stored in the file. The file format can be deduced from the file extension and the signature. However, different programs can use the same file extension, and file extensions can be assigned incorrectly. So a detailed analysis of a file is vital in order to determine the format and the associated program. Below is our analysis of the PCAP files:

PCAP is a very common file type and mainly uses a defined PCAP format. The following file formats are most commonly found in PCAP files:

• 90% of all PCAP files are associated with TCPDUMP's style capture. They consist of unreadable binary data. The files are often between 770 bytes and 6 MB in size. The file type is relatively new. Such PCAP files store data about qufirewall, capture, protection, basic, pcapdroid, root, tcpdump and dump.
• 4% of all PCAP files have the same signature . These are binary files, so they do not contain words or text. PCAP files are between 7 KB and 57 MB in size. The keywords Linux and Dumpcap (Wireshark) are typical for these files. The following filename is common: 20180601.pcap. Such files sometimes refer to iextp, android, staples, hpsmart, network, traffic, working, hours, shark, csdp, deep and tops.

All other PCAP files (6%) have no consistent format, often e.g. Extended TCPDUMP, GZIP, UTF-16 (LE) and JSON. These files are often connected to only, include, subnets, network, wireless or restricted. You can get all the details of your PCAP file by dragging it onto this page or by clicking the button "Choose your .pcap file to analyze" above.