nex

Cross-platform low-level networking library in Rust

Overview

nex is a Rust library that provides cross-platform low-level networking capabilities.
It includes sub-crates with responsibilities:

• nex-packet: Low-level packet parsing and serialization.
• nex-datalink: Raw datalink send/receive backends across platforms.
• nex-socket: Low-level socket operations with cross-platform option handling.

The project aims to expose portable low-level primitives.

Usage

To use nex, add it as a dependency in your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
nex = "0.25"

Using Specific Sub-crates

You can also directly use specific sub-crates by importing them individually.

• nex-datalink
• nex-packet
• nex-socket

If you want to focus on network interfaces, you can use the netdev.

Privileges

nex-datalink uses a raw socket which may require elevated privileges depending on your system's configuration.
Execute with administrator privileges if necessary.

For Windows Users

Please note that in order to send and receive raw packets using nex-datalink on Windows, Npcap is required.

1. Install Npcap, making sure to check Install Npcap in WinPcap API-compatible Mode during the installation.

2. Download the Npcap SDK. Add the SDK's /Lib/x64 (or /Lib) folder to your LIB environment variable.

For macOS Users

On macOS, managing access to the Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) devices is necessary to send and receive raw packets using nex-datalink. You can use chmod-bpf to automatically manage permissions for BPF devices. Alternatively, of course, you can also use sudo to temporarily grant the necessary permissions.