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Real-time network diagnostics in your terminal. One command, zero config, instant visibility.

1,900 starsRust

NetWatch – A Wireshark-style network analyzer TUI built in Rust

by matthart1983·Feb 26, 2026·1 point·0 comments
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AI Analysis

●●●BangerWizardryShip ItSolve My Problem

Wireshark-in-terminal with TCP reassembly, GeoIP, and htop-style UX. 20-year pro's tool.

Strengths
  • •Deep protocol decoding (TLS SNI, DNS, HTTP, TCP handshake timing) rivals Wireshark but instant-startup CLI.
  • •Spans htop-style dashboard to packet-level inspection in one tool; no Alt+Tab to Wireshark.
  • •Cross-platform Rust build (cargo install) with ratatui TUI — polished, responsive architecture.
Weaknesses
  • •Requires sudo/elevated privileges for packet capture; limits unprivileged environments.
  • •Niche audience (network/trading/platform engineers); broad appeal is narrower than netstat.
Target Audience

Network engineers, systems administrators, platform engineers debugging live traffic.

Similar To

Wireshark · htop · nethogs

Post Description

I built NetWatch because I wanted htop-style visibility into my network without leaving the terminal. It's a real-time TUI that gives you:

Live interface bandwidth with sparkline history Active connections with process/PID mapping Deep packet capture with protocol decoding (DNS, TLS/SNI, HTTP, ICMP, ARP, DHCP, NTP) Wireshark-style display filters (tcp and port 443, contains "google", dns or icmp) TCP stream reassembly with text/hex views TCP handshake timing (SYN→SYN-ACK→ACK latency) GeoIP and RDAP whois lookups PCAP export Protocol hierarchy statistics

Built with Rust, ratatui, and libpcap. Cross-platform: macOS, Linux, and Windows.

cargo install netwatch-tui

I've been in network/trading systems engineering for 20 years and wanted a tool that sits between netstat and Wireshark — something you can fire up in a second to answer "what's happening on my network right now?" without the overhead of a full GUI.

Feedback welcome — especially on the packet decoding and filter syntax.

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