All three versions of AirPcap include a USB adapter and optimized driver.
Capture 802.11 WLAN packets for rapid, comprehensive analysis with your favorite packet-analysis software. This is the only Microsoft Windows-based wireless capture device fully integrated with Wireshark and Riverbed® Cascade® Pilot software. Choose among three open, affordable, easy-to-deploy versions: AirPcap Classic, AirPcap Tx, and AirPcap Nx.
Check pricing and choose your AirPcap model today.
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With an AirPcap adapter three-pack, you can listen and capture from three channels simultaneouslyin Wireshark or Cascade Pilot software. Or aggregate the packets from those channels into a single data stream for analysis.

Instead of relying on a third-party vendor driver, we developed our own. This approach guarantees:
Customer Survey verified by TechValidate.
Source: TechValidate. TVID: D19-E9B-49A[SB1]
“AirPcap is invaluable for troubleshooting and testing new wireless products at the 802.11 level.”
- Engineer, Medium Enterprise Telecommunications Equipment Company
Source: TechValidate. TVID: CB0-23F-2AC[SB2]
“AirPcap has enabled us to quickly track problems with our wireless network. This saved us significant cost which otherwise would have been spent on an external company.”
- System Administrator, Cultural Institution, Netherlands
Source: TechValidate. TVID: B5B-FA3-EF3[SB3]
“AirPcap gives us the power to observe network problems and come up with a solution rather than just blindly shooting in the dark. It also gives us the ability to measure whether or not changes made to the service have the desired effect.”
- IT Architect, Educational Institution
Source: TechValidate. TVID: AA7-B6A-043[SB4]
Solves monitoring and testing wireless networks with speed and flexibility
Benefits from AirPcap Adapter through:
“We design Wi-Fi-equipped consumer products, and AirPcap helps us monitor critical firmware and wireless performance. There isn’t much other competition compared to AirPcap for us. It is considered an essential product validation tool.”
- Dave Andrus, Senior RF Engineer, Roku Inc
Source: TechValidate. TVID: 692-DEA-464[SB1]
Achieves 70-90% faster troubleshooting wireless issues using AirPcap adapter
Source: TechValidate. TVID: 1D3-3D4-3BC[SB1]
AirPcap is the best solution to capture and analyze wireless networks.
Troubleshoots/identifies wireless issues 70-90% faster using AirPcap
Leverages a wide range of analysis tools with AirPcap adapter
Uses AirPcap with the following tools depending on the issue being researched:
Aircrack-ng, Cain and Able for WEP cracking
Finds flexibility key benefit in using AirPcap adapter
Flexibility is at the core of many benefits:
Secure wireless networking and instant insight into security breaches
Source: TechValidate. TVID: 1D3-3D4-3BC[SB1]
Back to TopEach AirPcap adapter captures traffic on a single channel at a time; the channel setting for the AirPcap adapter can be changed using the AirPcap Control Panel, or from the “Advanced Wireless Settings” dialog in Wireshark or other tools. Depending on the model of your AirPcap adapter, it can be set to any valid 802.11a/b/g/n channel for packet capture.
AirPcap adapters operate in a completely passive mode. This means that they capture the traffic on a channel without associating with an access point or interacting with any other wireless device. Unless you are transmitting with either AirPcap Tx , Ex or Nx, the adapters are not detectable by any other wireless station.
The AirPcap adapters can work in Monitor Mode. In this mode, the AirPcap adapter will capture all of the frames that are transferred on a channel, not just frames that are addressed to it. This includes data frames, control frames and management frames.
The AirPcap software can optionally be configured to decrypt WEP-encrypted frames. An arbitrary number of keys can be configured in the driver at the same time, so that the driver can decrypt the traffic of more than one access point at the same time. WPA and WPA2 support is handled by applications such as Wireshark and Aircrack-ng.
When more than one AirPcap adapter is plugged in, the AirPcap Control Panel will show one additional interface: the Multi-Channel Aggregator. The Multi-Channel Aggregator is a virtual capture interface that can be used from Wireshark or any other supported application. Using this capture interface, the application will receive the traffic from all installed USB AirPcap adapters as if it was coming from a single device.
The Multi-Channel Aggregator has its own FCS, Capture Type and FCS Filter settings. These settings, and not those of the physical adapter, will be used when capturing from the Aggregator. Note that it’s not possible to set the channel of the Multi-Channel Aggregator; instead, the channel drop-down box will show a list of aggregated channels. To change the channel of any individual adapter, select the Capture adapter from the Interface drop-down list and set the desired value in the channel drop-down box.
View this FAQ to learn more about how AirPcap works
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AirPcap comes in three versions based on the types of channels you wish to monitor and whether you want capture, injection, or both. See the table for a comparison. Note that only AirPcap Nx comes with an external antenna connector.
| Model | AirPcap Classic | AirPcap Tx | AirPcap Nx |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full 802.11 Capture | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Wireshark Integration | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-channel Monitoring (requires 2+ adapters) |
Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Packet Transmission | No | Yes | Yes |
| External Antenna Connector | No | No | Yes |
| Form Factor | USB | USB | USB |
| Frequency Bands | b/g | b/g | a/b/g/n |
For more information, view the FAQ
Capture and analyze low-level 802.11b/g wireless traffic, including control, management, and data frames on your Windows workstation or laptop. Per-packet information is also available such as power, hardware timestamps (in micro-seconds), and receive rate.
Comes complete with all of the functionality of AirPcap Classic and, additionally, supports packet injection.
Chose this dual-band solution for packet capture and injection for 802.11n, 802.11a/b/g legacy modes, and the 4.9 GHz US public safety channels. It features 2 x 2 MIMO with two internal antennas plus two integrated MC-Card connectors for optional external antennas to enhance performance in the most demanding environments.
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