'net-works'-by-gnu-linux: Mausezahn: The Versatile Packet Crafter

What do you resort to when you want to bombard a network interface with a Broadcast packet storm, in a controlled manner? Get to
Mausezahn!

Does it sound like a title of a monarch from the medievals? Actually it is one of the most versatile packet crafter available today.

Mausezahn, literally means Mause (mouse) Zahn( Tooth)! Well, if you get to use the tool and have observed mice, you might understand the peculiarity in the name :)

mausezahn (mz) is one of the most versatile and robust packet generator around. It is used in various special scenarios:

Versatile and fully customizable packet generation
Penetration testing of firewalls and IDS
Finding weaknesses in network software or appliances
Creation of malformed packets to verify whether a system processes a given protocol correctly, i.e, to create the "impossible packets"!
Didactical demonstrations as lab utility
Performing stress tests on the network equipments

Packets can be crafted with absolute flexibility, by simple options to customize

Type of packet
Source and destination ports
Source and Destination MAC addresses
Source and Destination IP addresses
Delay between packets
Number of packets
ASCII Payload for packets
Length of the payload
VLAN's, QOS (Quality of Service) and COS ( Cost of Service) of packets
Setting flags in the packets
And other advanced packets, like the CDP(Cisco Discovery Packets)

You can install mz in Debian machines from the Universe repositories, by apt'ing for the package.

raghu@fossphosis$ sudo apt-get install mz

(It has a couple of library dependencies which will be satisfied automatically by APT)

Examples
(All instances of mz must be run as root, or in a Debian based machine for a non-root user sudo'ed):

Broadcast storm at maximum rate

raghu@fossphosis$ sudo mz eth0 -c 0 -b bcast

( It generates packets at a rate limited by the system clock!)

2. Send BPDU packets with $VLAN (2-4096) every 2 second to announcing the Root Bridge status in a STP (Scanning Tree Protocol) scenario,

raghu@fossphosis$ sudo mz eth0 -c 0 -d 2s -t bpdu vlan=$VLAN

3. Send IP multicast packets to the multicast group 230.1.1.1 using a UDP header with destination port 32000, at a rate of one frame every 10 msec:

raghu@fossphosis$ sudo mz eth0 -c 0 -d 10msec -B 230.1.1.1 -t udp dp=32000 -P "Multicast test packet"

Many more varieties of diverse packets, resulting from all the permutation and combination of all the fields in a packet can be easily created, in manners as shown above.